Congresswoman Gwen Moore was elected to represent Wisconsin’s 4th Congressional District in 2004, making her the first African American elected to Congress from the State of Wisconsin. She is a member of the esteemed House Ways and Means Committee, which is the oldest committee in the United States Congress and has jurisdiction over the Social Security system, Medicare, the Foster Care System, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, Unemployment Insurance, and all taxation, tariffs, and revenue-raising measures. She serves on the Social Security, Select Revenue Measures, and Worker and Family Support Subcommittees. She serves on the Select Committee on Economic Disparity and Fairness in Growth. She is also a member of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee. She serves on the Research and Technology Subcommittee and the Investigations and Oversight Subcommittee.
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Veterans are among our most honored citizens. Many of the rights and privileges that we enjoy today as Americans were courageously and selflessly fought for by our men and women in uniform. Their sacrifice deserves our unwavering gratitude and support. Sadly, we have seen a growing incidence of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) among service members who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan. To that end, we must make sure that the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs are properly equipped to care for these types of injuries. Congress is taking steps to:
Yet, despite these efforts, many service members suffering from PTSD do not seek needed care—or receive care even when they do come forward-- and continue to express fear that seeking care may adversely impact career advancement. I have been working to encourage the military to look at many ways to reduce this stigma, including encouraging the use of confidential mental health services. PTSD not only impacts service members but also their families. I have written legislation urging the Veterans Affairs and Defense Departments to ensure that family members have access to PTSD- related services and programs and to the extent possible, use holistic approaches that includes family members in the care targeted to the service member or veteran. I will continue to work and make sure that our nation provides our troops with the services they deserve and have earned. |
Creating jobs continues to be my top priority.
The economy has turned back from the brink and is growing, but the recovery is far too modest and more needs to be done to address persistent unemployment.
Following the financial collapse, Congress passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (Recovery Act), which is largely credited with preventing a second Great Depression. The Recovery Act directed funds to cities, states, non-profits and companies to make critical investments to keep jobs and put people to work. It also provided middle-class tax relief that helped 95 percent of families. Moody’s top economist, Mark Zandi, estimated that the Recovery Act raised real GDP by 3.4 percent and created 3 million jobs, or, stated another way, without the Recovery Act GDP would have been 6.5 percent lower in 2010.
The Recovery Act helped, but the recession was deeper than previously thought and we are years removed from its enactment. Therefore, I continue work on legislation to help create jobs, including efforts to help small businesses expand and get access to credit and to help state and local governments rebuild schools and public hospitals, while being mindful of the national debt. I have supported numerous efforts by Democrats to move jobs legislation. I am also a strong supporter of the Community Development Financial Institution Fund, which provides support to underserved and economically depressed communities, which is exactly where capital is most needed and transformative.
To ensure that our economy will continue to rebound, we must look forward and lay the groundwork so that that America leads in the 21st Century economy. This includes a comprehensive clean energy policy that will create jobs at home that cannot be outsourced. It includes investments in updated U.S. infrastructure, like updating crumbling bridges and roads and supporting high-speed rail that will connect our cities and our people. I will continue my commitment to support innovative research in the Milwaukee area to employ high-skilled labor, as well as reinvigorating our industrial base to take advantage of Milwaukee’s proud tradition of labor and manufacturing.
Milwaukee’s workforce is among the best in the nation. And standing up for our workers is important to make sure that everyone benefits from economic recovery, not just CEOs.
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As we provide support and propose smart reforms for our education system, I strongly believe we must prioritize the needs of low-income children, their families, their schools, and their communities. Access to a good education should be a fundamental human right for all children. We now have an historic opportunity to shape our nation’s educational future and significantly expand opportunities for all American children, including those children in need. As a member of Congress, my goal is to ensure that our education reforms include comprehensive, supportive improvements for students, their families, and their teachers—for example, school safety initiatives, better technology, smaller class sizes, after-school activities, and enhanced parent involvement. I also know firsthand that students do not come to school ready to learn when they are hungry. I have been a lifelong supporter of making sure that all children are provided with three healthy meals a day—a strategy proven to have a lasting positive impact on a child’s overall ability to succeed in school.
Itis imperative for our community and our economic potential that we help prepare all students to get into college and earn a degree. I am a product of Upward Bound, and know firsthand how vital it is to have a network of support for at-risk teens. Federal TRIO programs like Upward Bound, Student Support Services, and Talent Search help low-income, at-risk, and first generation college students fully realize their potential while they are in middle and high school, and then stay by their side up through college graduation.
Southeast Wisconsin is home to some of the finest higher education institutions in the country schools like Marquette, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Milwaukee Area Technical College, Alverno, and others are committed to training the next generation of our workforce. These schools give kids the skills they need to find good jobs—and they play a critical role in ensuring that our region maintains a healthy economy and competes globally.
Public education is one of our nation’s greatest civil rights advances. I will continue to work to make sure that every child has access to equal opportunity and a bright future. |
We now find ourselves facing one of the worst poverty crises in the history of our country. Today, more than 43 million Americans including 14.7 million children live in poverty. Additionally, the poverty rate among women climbed to 14.5 percent in 2010, the highest in 17 years. Meanwhile, more than 48 million Americans struggled at some point in the last year to put food on the table. Too many hardworking Americans find themselves slipping into poverty and or increasingly in need of basic necessities like housing and food.
I have spent my entire career in public service working to support hardworking low-income and middle class families and others including the elderly who tend to do even worse when the economy crumbles. In Congress, I have focused on reforming key government assistance programs to ensure that all Americans have a safety net to support their families and put food on the table. In 2009, legislation I wrote to expand assistance for homeless became law. Because of that, more of our most vulnerable citizens and their families can access vital services.
I am a strong supporter of nutrition programs that have helped many Americans keep food on the table and out of poverty. In addition to access to food, we also need to increase access to quality foods like fruits and vegetables in these programs. I have pushed legislation that would guarantee healthier meals each day for children participating in federal nutrition programs. During reauthorization of the Women Infants & Children and Child Nutrition programs in 2010, I worked with my colleagues to expand the availability of nutritious meals and snacks to children and improve the quality of food served in schools across the country.
I also champion helping those in poverty get educational opportunities to gain skills needed to get work and to help women in poverty escape domestic violence. I have long said domestic violence is a cancer that has infected our society, crossing all ethnic, socioeconomic and party lines. I have introduced a number of bills since coming to Washington to help prosecute abuses, and to make it easier for battered women to get help and find shelter.
I have also written legislation—the RISE (Rewriting to Improve and Secure an Exit Out of Poverty) Act – reauthorizing the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program to make sure that it truly helps give individuals and families the tools they need to transition from poverty. For example, this legislation would guarantee child care is available so recipients can find a job and work without worrying about who is going to look after the kids.
We must continue to break down known barriers and provide families with the support they need and deserve as they work their way out of the grip of poverty, hunger, and this devastating recession.
For far too long, Congress has sidestepped our mounting immigration challenges, but the unified cry for action has never been louder from our community organizers, faith groups, labor unions and business leaders. I strongly believe that now is the time to enact responsible reform to our broken immigration system.
It is critical that throughout our reform efforts, we ensure our deeply flawed immigration laws and policies align more closely with our core values of attracting the best and brightest in the world, strengthening families and communities, and bolstering fundamental fairness and economic opportunity for all.
To face this challenge, it is crucial that we replace our failed enforcement-only policies with a solution that works. I believe that we must include a tough but fair pathway to citizenship for the 11 million aspiring Americans currently living here in the shadows.
I will continue to fight for comprehensive immigration reform.
To view my letter urging my colleagues to support CIR that protects and empowers women, please click here. The issue of Immigration is important to our district and to my work in Congress.
As a member of the House Committee on Financial Services, I worked with my colleagues to address the causes of the 2008 recession, to stop future bailouts of Wall Street, and to prevent another economic collapse by enacting the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (Dodd-Frank). Dodd-Frank makes important changes to federal law to promote financial stability by improving accountability and transparency in the financial system, to end “too big to fail,” and to protect consumers from abusive practices.
Specifically, Dodd-Frank created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), which protects Americans from unfair and abusive financial products and services. As we learned from the credit crisis, deceptive financial products – like predatory mortgages and hidden credit card fees – hit everyday Americans’ pocketbooks and can also destabilize the entire economy. The bill also makes critical improvements to the derivatives markets, which played a central role in the financial collapse, by requiring more transparency in trading and pricing and by requiring them to be cleared. Dodd-Frank also requires systemically important financial companies to create a “living will,” or plan to wind them down in the event that they collapse, and also provides the FDIC with authority in certain instances to orderly liquidate financial institutions to end the need for Wall Street bailouts in the future. Dodd-Frank further protects taxpayers by providing important protections for municipal governments when they issue bonds.
Many of the Dodd-Frank reforms are already working. Among the reforms that are making a difference today are that enhanced powers granted to the Commodities Futures Trading Commission uncovered and led to a settlement in the LIBOR scandal. The CFPB recently concluded its first action that resulted in a $140 million restitution settlement to consumer victims of deceptive credit card practices. The derivatives market is reforming and becoming more transparent.
However, the work continues to ensure the long-term prosperity of the United States by creating a smart, responsive, and robust regulatory environment that both protects consumers and encourages financial innovation and risk taking.
I was honored to be a part of history and to have served in the Congress that passed comprehensive health care reform. Through the Affordable Care Act, we extended health care coverage to 30 million uninsured Americans while at the same time lowering health care costs overall and cutting our nation's deficit. The Affordable Care Act puts Americans and small businesses – not health insurance companies – in charge of their health care decisions.
Implementation of our health insurance reforms will be phased in until state insurance exchanges begin operating in 2014.
Many benefits are already available, including:
Small businesses can receive tax credits to help afford insurance for their employees;
Seniors can receive assistance affording prescription drugs;
Health plans must cover preventive health care such as mammograms and colonoscopies without charging a deductible or co-pay;
Insurance companies have been banned from canceling coverage when someone gets too sick;
Children with pre-existing conditions can get affordable insurance;
Insurance companies can’t place arbitrary yearly or lifetime benefit caps; and
Children can stay on their parents’ insurance until their 26th birthdays.
Although we have made great progress by passing our health care reform law, there is still work to be done. I am a strong supporter of research that will help us find ways to prevent, treat, and cure a range of illnesses, such as breast cancer, kidney disease, and diabetes. I am a champion for protecting women’s access to a full range of reproductive health services. Finally, I believe it should be among our highest priorities to make sure that affordable, quality health coverage is available to all Americans, including those who rely on Medicaid and Medicare for their care
During my time in Congress I have been a champion for improving the lives of women and advancing gender equality. From working to increase the 77 cents that women make for every dollar earned by a man to ensuring that women have access to affordable health care, I have made women and their families a top priority.
As the immediate past Democratic Chair of the Congressional Caucus for Women’s Issues, the largest bipartisan caucus in Congress, I have spearheaded efforts to ensure women have equal opportunity and are treated fairly. I have fought year after year for adequate funding to make shelters and supportive services more accessible to victims of family and domestic violence. I have also led the way on legislation that would improve our nation’s response to domestic violence, and help prevent teen dating violence. In addition, I have authored legislation that would help low-income women - including those who are welfare recipients - find a pathway out of poverty and a better life for themselves and their children.
We need to protect our environment and natural resources because our nation’s public lands and waterways are irreplaceable. Nowhere does this hit closer to home than Lake Michigan and the Great Lakes basin. Millions of people live, work, play, or get their drinking water from these waters which also serve as an important economic engine for our region.
Yet, we know the Great Lakes face serious challenges including the threat from invasive species, ongoing development, and pollution. Congress has an important role to play in addressing these threats to ensure that economic, environmental and recreational benefits remain for future generations.
During my tenure in Congress, I have not waivered in my support of legislation that enhances protection for the Great Lakes, our nation’s public lands, parks and forests, and our air and water. As a Member of the Great Lakes Task Force, I have worked with my colleagues from the region on issues of bipartisan concern. This includes cosponsoring legislation such as the Great Lakes Ecosystem Protection Act, the Great Lakes Collaboration Implementation Act, and legislation reauthorizing the Great Lakes Legacy Act.
I also strongly support and will continue to fight for funding for the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, a multi-year commitment from the Obama Administration that will help remove toxic substances from area waterways, combat invasive species, protect the public health from nonpoint Source Pollution and protect habitat and wildlife.
I will also continue to work to oppose efforts to increase irresponsible and environmentally damaging oil drilling in sensitive environmental areas and logging in our national forests. I am also opposed to efforts by House Republicans to undermine key environmental protection laws such as the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and Endangered Species Act which were all enacted on a bipartisan basis.
Our region’s and nation’s natural resources are not only environmental treasures but also economic generators. In the Milwaukee area, a number of water-related technology companies have chosen to set up shop because of proximity to Lake Michigan and the other Great Lakes. As former Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson—the founder of Earth Day—put it, “The economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment, not the other way around…All economic activity is dependent upon that environment and its underlying resource base of forests, water, air, soil, and minerals. When the environment is finally forced to file for bankruptcy because its resource base has been polluted, degraded, dissipated, and irretrievably compromised, the economy goes into bankruptcy with it.”
Great Lakes communities have long taken pride in protecting our region’s natural resources. As a Member of Congress, I will continue to work to ensure that the federal government does its part.