WASHINGTON, D.C. - Congressman Brad Wenstrup (OH-2) released the following statement on the passage of the National Defense Authorization Act for FY2017: “Passing the NDAA is vital to ensuring the strength and readiness of our armed forces. This bill authorizes funding for operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and around the world. The NDAA includes a 2.1% pay increase for our troops, the largest in 6 years, improves access to quality care for service members, retirees, and their families, stops the ... Read more

When it comes to issues dealing with abortion, most Americans group themselves into one of two opposite camps: pro-life or pro-choice. But according to a new poll, these labels can actually be misleading. Marist Poll, which measures public opinion for clients like NBC News and Wall Street Journal, conducted a survey for Knights of Columbus in July and found that an overwhelming majority of Americans support pro-life policies, regardless of their pro-life/pro-choice affiliations. In this poll, 43... Read more

Fifteen years ago today I was seeing patients in our clinic in Blue Ash, Ohio, on what seemed like a regular Tuesday morning. Not long after my day had started, an assistant came back to my clinic area with bad news: a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center in New York City. At first, I just wondered how, or why. Probably a terrible and freak accident, I assumed. Not long after that, she returned and told me that another plane had struck the Twin Towers. I remember staring at her in disbe... Read more

Fears are rising as the Zika virus has become a national concern. Nearly three months ago, my colleagues and I in the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill to help combat the virus, which is borne by mosquitos and can cause serious birth defects and other conditions if contracted during pregnancy. Yet Americans are still waiting for relief. Why? Because Senate Democrats refused to pass this bill before going home for the August District Work Period. Passing our bill should have been simple... Read more

You don’t have to look very far, from any spot in America, to see what poverty looks like. For many in poverty, another way of life is something on TV and seemingly not obtainable. In his 1964 State of the Union address, President Lyndon B. Johnson declared an “unconditional war on poverty in America.” While well-intended, census data shows that 52 years and trillions of dollars later, the official poverty rate in 2014 (14.8%) was no better than it was in 1966 (14.7%). Should we keep doing the s... Read more

Repeated terror attacks in our homeland have Americans on edge, and understandably so. The pain and concern are palpable. Since 2009, we have seen terror attacks in Little Rock, Fort Hood, Oklahoma, Boston, Chattanooga, San Bernardino, and now Orlando. We have also seen mass shootings in Colorado, Connecticut, and Charleston. Some of these attacks were carried out with bombs and knives. In others, guns were used. But the obvious common thread running through all of them was this: mentally afflic... Read more

Mr. John Smith 123 Main Street Anywhere, Ohio 12345 Total due: $60,000 Please make checks payable to the United States Department of Treasury. Imagine opening your mail to find this bill for $60,000 from the federal government. It seems far-fetched, doesn’t it? Actually, that’s about how much each American citizen would currently have to pay in order to eliminate our national debt. If that number isn’t scary enough, think about what the bill will be for our children and grandchildren, the ones w... Read more

Thank you. Thank you to all the hard working employees who have labored over the years on securing our nation’s uranium enrichment independence. The project has had different names across different decades, but the mission never changed: supply America with a domestically owned source of enriched uranium. This mission started in the throes of the Cold War, and extended into the 21st Century. When the United States was facing an existential threat of nuclear war with the Soviet Union, we got to w... Read more

This Friday, we were able to bring some of our work on Capitol Hill to Ohio's 2nd District, hosting a Congressional Field Hearing, Best Practices in Veterans Hiring. Regular hearings like this are part of my job responsibilities as the subcommittee chairman of the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs Economic Opportunity Subcommittee. I was honored to host my colleagues, including Reps Chabot, Johnson, Messer, and Takano, to hear from leading employers in Ohio and the nation. Representatives fro... Read more

About a year ago, the Military Compensation and Retirement Modernization Commission (MCRMC) issued a report “to conduct a review of military compensation and retirement systems and to make recommendations to modernize such systems.” The report’s aim was to, in part, “ensure the long-term viability of the All-Volunteer Force” and “enable the quality of life for members of the Armed Forces and the other uniformed services and their families in a manner that fosters successful recruitment, retentio... Read more