e-News 1/29/16

• The Final Year in Office
• ICYMI: “Syria's al-Nusra 'more dangerous' than ISIS”
• “Iran's arrest of U.S. sailors broke international law”
• Signs of growing anti-Semitism
• Salute: The USO’s 75 Years of Service
• Salute: Mendham Township’s Brookside Volunteer Fire Company

The Final Year in Office

We have now officially reached the final year of Barack Obama’s Presidency.  We’ve already heard from the White House that the President will use his last months as President to cement his legacy. 

I have to say, the President's final goals are not acceptable to many Americans – bringing dangerous terrorists from Guantanamo Bay to the United States, underfunding our Armed Forces, sweeping executive actions on every conceivable issue, etc. - and Congress has a responsibility, under our Constitution, to hold him accountable.

We have already forced the President to confront Congress’s full repeal of the President’s disastrous Obamacare law and a rejection of his EPA’s regulatory overreach. It should not stop there.

I am optimistic about House operations under new Speaker Paul Ryan.  In “Congress-speak,” we are going back to “regular order” to craft meaningful legislation on the core issues: national security, jobs and economic growth, health care, poverty and opportunity. We’re going to have many more hearings, more amendments on every bill and we’ll be working through the various committees.

My primary responsibility falls into that “national security” category.  My House Defense Appropriations Committee provides funding for the entire Department of Defense and all the agencies that make up the Intelligence Community.

The President’s budget proposal will be released in the next two weeks.  Exercising our oversight responsibilities, under the Constitution, we will carefully examine the President’s plan, in the context of more diverse terrorist and other security threats than ever before. I am committed to making sure that more resources are spent wisely to fund military and our intelligence agencies.

I have urged the Administration and Congress to make sure we make more defense investments today to ensure that we will be prepared to defend our interests against ALL threats in the years to come.

With that said, we must ensure that the next President of the United States, as Commander-in-Chief, has the resources and the tools to ensure that the U.S. military remains the modern era’s greatest champion of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. 

ICYMI:  CNN reported Tuesday “Syria's al-Nusra 'more dangerous' than ISIS.” Worth a read considering that everyone is focused on ISIS and the “caliphate.”

“Iran's arrest of U.S. sailors broke international law”

“Iran’s supreme leader is hailing his hard-line paramilitary forces as heroes for their arrest of 10 American sailors at gunpoint, but an emerging consensus of U.S. legal experts believe the provocative act was a dangerous violation of international law that has so far gone without repercussions.   Read “Experts: Iran's arrest of U.S. sailors broke international law” in the Navy Times here.

More important is that our "Supreme Leader" discounted and dismissed the seizure, and again reinforced to the world that oppressive nations can do what they want without repercussions and consequences!

Signs of growing anti-Semitism

Amid signs of growing anti-Semitism worldwide, Wednesday marked International Holocaust Remembrance Day.  January 27 was the date the United Nations selected to commemorate victims of the Holocaust during World War II. Six million Jews were murdered by Germany's Nazi regime.  Remembrance Day, noted each year since 2005, falls on the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp in Poland by the Russian army in 1945. One million people died there.

To his credit, President Obama used the occasion to warn against growing anti-Semitism across the globe. “We must confront the reality that around the world, anti-Semitism is on the rise. We cannot deny it," he said at a remembrance ceremony at the Israeli embassy. He cited Jews fleeing European cities, attacks on Jewish centers in Mumbai, India and Overland Park, Kansas. "When we see all that and more, we must not be silent," he said.

Read more about the commemoration in USA Today’s story 'I, too, am a Jew': Obama warns of growing anti-Semitism” here.

Locally, I am proud to serve on the Advisory Board of the College of St. Elizabeth’s (CSE) Center for Holocaust and Genocide Education which provides education and remembrance of the Holocaust and other genocides.  The Center’s goal is to provide a variety of programs, courses, resources, and other educational opportunities to CSE students and the community.

Learn more about the College of St. Elizabeth’s Center for Holocaust and Genocide Education and Professor Harriet Sepinwall’s leadership of that program here.  

Salute:  Next week, the USO, one of the nation's leading military-serving nonprofit organizations, officially celebrates 75 years of service in keeping men and women in uniform who protect our freedoms connected to the things they love: family, home, and country.

Salute:A hearty congratulations and sincere thank you to the volunteers of Brookside Volunteer Fire Company as they celebrated 100 years of service to the Mendham Township last night!