Congressman Paul Tonko represents New York’s 20th Congressional District, including the communities of Albany, Schenectady, Troy, Saratoga Springs and Amsterdam. He represents all of Albany and Schenectady Counties and parts of Montgomery, Rensselaer and Saratoga Counties.
He is serving his seventh term, after first being sworn into Congress in 2009.
Paul serves on the Energy and Commerce Committee, the oldest standing committee in the House, created in December of 1795. He is the first Upstate New York Democratic member to serve on the committee since Leo O'Brien, who resigned the post in October 1966. He was elected by his peers in the 116th Congress to chair the Subcommittee on Environment and Climate Change. He was also selected to continue his service on the Science, Space and Technology Committee, as well as on the Natural Resources Committee.
In 2018, our nation lost more than 68,500 family, friends and neighbors to the devastating disease of addiction, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
While that year marked the first drop in overdose deaths in the U.S. in almost 30 years, we are still facing a crisis that continues to overwhelm our communities. In fact, Americans are dying from this illness at a faster rate than they did at the height of the HIV/AIDS epidemic that sparked a national movement to address it. This tremendous loss of life is so staggering that overdose deaths contributed to the overall reduction of Americans life expectancy.
Despite the horror and scope of this epidemic, just 1 in 5 individuals suffering with Substance Use Disorder is receiving the treatment they need.
We have to demand better. This disease of despair deserves a response rooted in hope.
We must broaden our focus from arrests and incarceration alone to include pillars of prevention, treatment and recovery. And we must transform the way we think and talk about this issue, applying science and practical solutions we know can work to intervene for individuals who find themselves on a path to addiction and those already in crisis, and to support these individuals and their families in finding a path of prevention or recovery.
As the grandson of dairy farmers, I understand the importance of agriculture to New York's economy. While our family farms are the backbone of the rural economy, they also provide food security for our kitchen tables.
In 2014, Congress passed a new Farm Bill, and we must work together to ensure our local family farms are aware of and have the tools to access programs that support our rural businesses.
I have and will continue to fight to see that the federal government acts quickly and effectively to help family farms that feel the devastating impacts of extreme weather events.
In 2010, five judges on the Supreme Court remade American politics into a new system where the richest among us have the loudest voices and the most influence. That's not how this country became the best in the world, and it's certainly not a system that will help us overcome the many challenges before us today.
We should be a government of the many, not the money. I will continue to work in Congress with both parties to pass commonsense legislation that will level the political playing field between billionaires and the middle class.
I have cosponsored the Government By the People Act, which encourages working families to play a larger role in our electoral politics, and empowers them to have their voices heard. I have also cosponsored a proposed Constitutional amendment that would give Congress the tools it needs to make campaign finance laws and strike down Citizens United.
A Framework for Climate Action in the U.S. Congress
Chairman Paul Tonko
Environment & Climate Change Subcommittee
Committee on Energy & Commerce
U.S. House of Representatives
116th Congress, First Session
March 21, 2019
Dear Friends,
Americans are living, and dying, in the path of unprecedented flooding, raging wildfires, and battering storms driven by Earth’s changing climate. Regardless of the origins of our predicament, we have inherited these conditions. It falls to us to set aside past disagreements and rise together to meet this challenge.
We agree that climate change is real. We agree humans are driving it. We agree that we need to build solutions that meet the scale and urgency of the crisis we face. The principles outlined in this document are meant to provide a framework that moves the lines of our agreement forward and helps us build a comprehensive national climate action plan together.
As we assess the ideas before us, no options should be off the table. Rather, I submit that any climate proposal we consider should be measured against the principles enclosed here. They reflect extensive conversations with Members of Congress and stakeholders. I present them to you for your consideration, reflection, and feedback.
Yours,
Paul D. Tonko
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SHARE YOUR CLIMATE STORY!
Climate change is already impacting our community, whether in the form of extreme weather including Hurricanes Irene and Lee, increased health risks tied to asthma, emphysema and heart disease, a more volatile business environment, or any of the other countless harms we're already seeing from these changes. Has Climate Change affected you, your family, your home, your health, your job or your business? Share your climate story and strengthen my voice as I push for comprehensive climate action in the U.S. Congress and beyond.
Click here to submit your story.
Outline of Common Principles for National Climate Action
Click here for a PDF of the full report
1. Adopt Science-Based Targets for Greenhouse Gas Neutrality by Mid-Century
Reduction of greenhouse gas emissions is an economic, public health, environmental, and national security necessity.
Americans are already experiencing the costs and consequences of climate change. According to the overwhelming scientific consensus, many serious harms caused by climate change will intensify as a result of continued warming. Under the Paris Agreement, nations of the world responded to this growing crisis by developing individual action plans and set a goal of limiting global temperature rise to well below 2 degrees Celsius.
Congress must enact policies that set certain and enforceable targets to put the United States on a path toward achieving net zero emissions by no later than mid-century.
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2. Ensure a Clean U.S. Economy is Strong, Competitive, and Fair
The United States can lead the world in clean energy, creating new jobs and industries that carry added benefits including exporting American technologies, skills, and services to countries around the world.
Millions of Americans work in clean energy industries today. Federal climate action doubles as an opportunity to grow the economy through investments in research, development, and deployment of technologies that will create millions of additional clean energy and advanced manufacturing jobs. Similarly, a significant number of quality jobs, if coupled with strong labor and procurement standards, will be created through building and modernizing America’s infrastructure in order to support the clean energy transition.
Congress must ensure emerging clean energy industries provide fair wages and safe working conditions. It must also protect America’s energy-intensive and trade-exposed industries from anti-competitive behavior by nations that have not taken significant steps to combat climate change or enforce meaningful labor and environmental standards.
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3. Climate Action Should Invest in America’s Future
Federal climate action requires Congressional support for innovations in technology, policy, and finance to accelerate the clean energy transition and bring down costs of economy-wide decarbonization.
These investments should encourage energy efficiency; research, development, and demonstration in clean energy technologies including carbon capture, utilization, and storage; increased electrification across all sectors of the economy; deployment of cleaner transportation options as well as clean and renewable electricity resources supported by a modernized, smart, and flexible electric grid; carbon dioxide removal technologies; and natural climate solutions including improved management of forests, soil, and land use. Investments in public lands, watersheds, and oceans can support additional economic opportunities while sequestering significant amounts of greenhouse gas emissions and creating more resilient communities and ecosystems. The federal government must dedicate the resources necessary to make a sustained commitment toward achieving ambitious mitigation goals.
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4. Climate Action Should Deliver a Just & Equitable Transition
Confronting the climate crisis offers an opportunity to address historic environmental injustices and create pathways of opportunity for all Americans.
Low-income communities, communities of color, and indigenous peoples are already suffering disproportionate harm from climate change. Federal climate policy should respond to that hardship by investing in opportunities and support for communities in high-pollution and climate-exposed areas, as well as working to reduce dangerous co-pollutants that can significantly impact public health. Federal climate policies should encourage community-based solutions by seeking public engagement and participation with vulnerable and disadvantaged groups.
Federal policies should also direct investments in deindustrialized and rural communities to help spur economic development and diversification. To the extent that economic changes displace workers and erode community-supporting revenue streams, especially in communities and regions historically dependent on traditional energy industries, the federal government should provide transition assistance in the form of guaranteed pensions and benefits, education and job retraining, relocation benefits, community reinvestment, and support for other new opportunities to share in the benefits of the growing clean energy economy.
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5. Climate Action Should Protect Low-Income Households
Federal climate policy should avoid disproportionate burdens on vulnerable people.
Low-income households spend a greater portion of their incomes on energy-related expenses. To the extent that climate policies might impact low- and fixed-income Americans, federal policy should offset any potentially regressive impacts on these households.
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6. Climate Action Should Strengthen Community Resilience to Better Withstand New Climate Realities
Federal climate policies should ensure that all Americans are protected from climate-related harms, regardless of where they live.
Americans are already being harmed by the consequences of climate change. While steps must be taken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and prevent further long-term damage, federal climate solutions should also strengthen the resilience of infrastructure and help communities adapt to the increasing occurrence of natural disasters and extreme weather events, spread of diseases, and other impacts that threaten the public’s health and livelihoods. Investments that reduce the risk of these harms will more than pay for themselves over time.
Congress should also apply science-based adaptation policies to help ecosystems, fisheries, and wildlife threatened by climate change. Every agency and level of government must consider best practices to manage and minimize the risks posed by climate change when making investments in built and natural infrastructure, while recognizing that the long-term success of an adaptation strategy is diminished without a complementary mitigation strategy.
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7. Climate Action Should Empower State, Local, Tribal, and Territorial Governments
State, local, and community leaders are often in the best position to enact innovative policies to manage or prevent climate damage—and many already have.
Each state and region faces unique climate challenges. While some approaches may require federal implementation, state, local, tribal, and territorial governments should receive the financial support, technical assistance, and flexibility necessary to pursue policies that help achieve national climate goals through specific means that are best suited for local conditions and implementation.
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8. Climate Action Should Avoid Harm to First Movers
Many entities have already taken steps to confront the growing climate crisis.
Federal climate policy should, to the extent possible, complement work already being done by states, municipalities, businesses, and individuals. Whenever possible, it should avoid penalizing entities that have taken early action.
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9. Climate Action Should Create Stable and Predictable Policies
Every stakeholder engaged in climate action, whether public, private or non-profit, needs to know that federal climate policies are durable and predictable.
Long-term climate progress requires policy certainty, which needs to come through statute and therefore requires action by Congress. Federal climate action must create steady, credible, and politically durable policies, send strong investment signals, and deliver long-term certainty to allow for proper planning and implementation while minimizing compliance costs. Regulators should have the flexibility to undertake periodic scientific reviews of goals, respond to changing conditions, and accommodate new developments in best practices and emerging technologies.
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If you have comments, questions, or feedback regarding the content outlined in this document, please contact the Office of Congressman Paul Tonko.
We have never lived in a more turbulent, more complicated time with regard to terrorism and how to keep our nation safe. I believe we have taken great strides in moving toward a more peaceful world with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the historic deal that blocks every pathway Iran has toward developing and employing a nuclear weapon. After great deliberation, I supported the plan after reading it, and I was pleased to hear in January 2016 that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) verified that Iran is complying with the demands we made and is scaling down their nuclear program to one that remains exclusively peaceful.
Effectively blocking Iran’s pathways to a nuclear weapon doesn’t represent the whole of the challenges we have in the foreign policy arena – and there are bad actors around the globe, both under a flag and without a country. In Congress, I will continue to support policies that first exhausts all diplomatic options and uses the declaration of war and putting American boots on the ground as the absolute last resort. I will continue to urge my colleagues to be more realistic about working with the executive branch to free up resources that destroy ISIS. Most importantly, I will continue ensure that we do not repeat the foreign policy mistakes of the past that spend trillions of dollars and cost us hundreds of thousands of civilian and soldier’s lives.
We became the best nation in the world by providing our educators and parents with the tools they need to raise the leaders of tomorrow. Today, we have a great need for more graduates who are educated in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) disciplines. I fully support the White House’s Educate to Innovate initiative that will move American students to the top of the list when it comes to STEM training. In Congress, I have worked with Senator Kirsten Gillibrand to introduce legislation that boosts engineering education in schools, the Educating Tomorrow’s Engineers Act, or the ETEA.
I ran for Congress in 2008 because our nation did not have a clear energy policy. Our nation and our economy has everything to gain by embracing cleaner fuels and making energy efficiency our fuel of choice. In Congress, I fight against the notion that climate deniers support that we must choose between a green environment and a robust economy. It’s a false choice. I will continue to work to give American businesses the resources they need to tap into the “green collar” job markets of the future and make our nation a global leader on protecting the environment and making it more sustainable for generations to come.
I am a co-chair of the Sustainable Energy and Environment Coalition, which promotes clean energy technology innovation and domestic manufacturing, the development of renewable energy resources, and the creation of new, quality jobs throughout the product supply chain. The efforts of this group promotes climate issues in Congress and moves our colleagues in the climate denier community closer to reality, strengthening the fight against our world’s greatest threat.
More than 100 people on average die from gun violence every day in America.
As our nation has grappled with the devastating COVID pandemic, our communities continue to suffer the continuing scourge of gun violence with more than 41,000 Americans killed by a gun just in 2020.
Americans today are 25 times more likely to die by a gun homicide than the people of any other developed nation. We do not have 25 times more mental illness, nor 25 times more violent video games.
There can be no question: America is experiencing a gun violence epidemic.
America now has more guns than people, with 120 firearms for every 100 U.S. residents—far more than the country with the second highest civilian gun concentration, Yemen, which has 52 guns per 100 residents. Canada, ranked number six for countries with the highest civilian gun ownership, has 34 guns per 100 people.
Of the top 10 most deadly mass shootings in modern U.S. history, half have come in the last 5 years. In 2018, there were a total of 340 mass shootings, nearly one for every day of the year.
America’s high school students are among the first to live their entire lives with active shooter drills and reinforced doors at school as a normal part of school life. They have responded with a movement, organizing March for Our Lives nationwide demonstrations and demanding action from their leaders and predecessors in power. Their action is an inspiration, but we cannot leave it to them alone to fight for commonsense gun reform.
The horror of America's mass shooting tragedies is multiplied with every new event. The heartbreak has become so frequent, and our national response consistently falls short of the meaningful lifesaving reforms we know we need. We can and we must do better. Thoughts and prayers are not enough. I offer those to all of America’s victims of gun violence, and more importantly, I offer them my voice and my vote.
Since March 2010 when the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, or the ACA, was passed, we have made great gains in improving our national health care system. Despite constant political attacks from those who embraced the same ideas decades ago, the ACA has insured the highest number of Americans in our nation’s history while bringing the rate at which our national spending on health care grows to the slowest in 50 years. The benefits of the ACA are numerous. Click here to read an abbreviated list.
In Congress, I will continue to support policies that strengthen the ACA and improve health care for every American. After the Supreme Court upheld the law twice since it’s creation, it is my hope that partisan attacks will cease, and both parties will work together to make the system more affordable and more accessible for patients.
We are a nation of immigrants. We built this country by embracing and celebrating different heritages and backgrounds and not letting those difference get in the way of the work that lays before us. I support comprehensive immigration reform in Congress that ends illegal entry into the country, and effectively addresses the reality that 12 million undocumented individuals already live within our borders. I have cosponsored legislation in the House that reforms our broken immigration system, grows our GDP by almost $1 trillion in the next decade, and creates 121,000 new jobs each year for the next ten years
In 2017, it is ludicrous to think we can operate major cities like Albany, Troy and Schenectady on pipes that are older than the Rutherford B. Hayes administration. In fact, there are 12 U.S. states that were admitted to the union after many of our pipes and underground infrastructure were first built. Updating our aging and broken infrastructure above and below ground is my top priority in Congress. Many shy away from the price tag of bringing our roads, bridges and pipes into the 21st century, but the cost of doing nothing – estimated at $1 trillion per year by the American Society of Civil Engineers – far outweighs the up-front costs. Each time we see a disaster like a bridge collapsing in Minnesota or a contaminated water system ruining a generation of lives in Flint, Michigan, our economy, our schools, our businesses, and our lives grind to a halt. It’s time to get real about the challenges before us, rebuild American roads, bridges and pipes – and create quality good-paying American jobs in the process.
Recovering from the Great Recession of 2007 and 2008 has been job one since I was first elected to Congress in 2009. As of the end of 2016, we had seen 75 consecutive months of private sector job growth and an unemployment rate cut in half. While these accomplishments are nothing to scoff at, our largest economic challenge today is to stop the suppression of middle-class wages. That means fighting against harmful trade policies like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and supporting economic justice in our private sector, giving our small businesses the tools and targeted tax credits they need to thrive, expand and hire locally.
I made mental health a priority during my days in the New York State Assembly when I first met Timothy O’ Clair at a little league game in 2001. Timothy was a bright and energetic youngster with the whole world ahead of him. Unfortunately, Timothy also suffered from a debilitating mental illness. When Timothy’s insurance would no longer cover his treatment, his parents were forced to disown him in order to get treatment. Unable to receive the appropriate care, at the age of 12, Timothy tragically completed suicide. Timothy’s struggle to get the care he needed is what first led me down the path of working to improve the mental health system in America.
Successfully passing mental health parity in the New York State Assembly – Timothy’s Law – gave me the drive to improve the way we approach mental health care in America nationwide. To me, that means reducing the stigma for those seeking care, addressing the growing problem of substance abuse, and giving our health care professionals the resources they need to adequately recognize and address the challenges those who live with mental illness must grapple with every day.
Social Security and Medicare represent a solemn promise to those who worked all their lives and paid into the system will retire with the dignity they deserve. While many in Congress believe we should cut benefits to save the system, I believe we should raise the cap at which the wealthiest among us stop paying into the system, and use those resources to increase the solvency of the system and increase benefits.
I also support provisions in the Affordable Care Act that provide free preventive care for seniors, save them money on prescription medication, and close the Medicare Part D “donut hole”.
When our middle class succeeds, America succeeds. The middle class built the most powerful economy the world has ever known from the ground up. Today, hard-working families continue to struggle to make ends meet and have a life outside of the office. In Congress, we can address these challenges by supporting policies like equal pay, paid leave, and a hike in the minimum wage.
We can never fully repay the debt owed to those who fight to keep our nation safe – and the families that count the days until they return home. Congress talks a big game about supporting our troops, but we must do more to create opportunity for them as they leave the service and return to build a home, continue their career and raise a family.
Civil rights have taken on renewed salience since the murder of George Floyd, but the duty and principle of achieving real racial justice in America has gone unfulfilled since the first Black individuals were shackled, kidnapped and delivered to American shores against their will more than four centuries ago.
I have worked for years to confront many related systemic challenges, including pushing for new national standards, resources and protections that would lift up communities of color, make policing safer for everyone, protect vulnerable people from harmful pollution, and put the safety and well-being of our communities first. This has included working to expand resources for community policing strategies, ending the sale of Pentagon surplus weapons of war to local police departments, requiring the use of body cameras and much more.
Recent Events
The challenge of racial justice and systemic violence in America's policing was driven painfully home when a peace officer serving in the Schenectady Police Department was filmed with his knee on the head and neck of a civilian, Yugeshwar Gaindarpersaud, for more than two full minutes before brutally beating the man.
I shared that I was enraged and heartbroken to see this violence, that I have been told these practices are neither taught nor used by our local departments, and I called for answers, accountability and transparency. While the calls supporting that basic call for truth and corresponding reform were far greater in number, the backlash from a small vocal minority has been aggressively defensive and often extremely vulgar.
Our Schenectady NAACP generously offered me an opportunity to speak at their press conference the following weekend. Here is my full statement as it was delivered at that event:
Thank you for the invitation to speak with you, and stand with you, today. While circumstances prevent me from being there in person, I have asked my trusted advisor Colleen to share a few words that I hope will convey the gravity of my feelings in this moment.
On May 25th, more than a month ago, police officers in Minneapolis responded to a call about a forged check. That call resulted in one of those officers kneeling on the neck of George Floyd for 8 minutes and 46 seconds, killing him brutally and senselessly.
I would like to believe that, even if George Floyd had not been killed, we would still have responded with outrage and demanded reform.
I would like to believe that his recorded cries for help, cries of “I can’t breathe” and for his departed mother would still have haunted us and awakened our moral conviction that brutal practices now commonplace in American policing must change.
I would like to believe these things.
In the past several weeks, leaders across our communities, our state, and the House of Representatives where I serve have responded with serious reforms. Mayor McCarthy signed a citywide ordinance banning knee-to-neck policing. Our state advanced serious reforms as well. And our Justice in Policing Act passed the House, banning chokeholds, no-knock warrants and raising the bar of accountability and transparency to safeguard the rights and safety of our community members.
Those measures are important, the people who fought for them and fight for them still deserve our thanks and praise.
But on Monday, July 6th, a police officer in Schenectady responded to a call about slashed tires. He confronted the person suspected of this crime in front of his own house. That call resulted in the officer chasing, tackling, and kneeling on the head of Yugeshwar Gaindarpersaud, a member of our community, for at least two minutes and five seconds.
And beating him in the process.
These are not matters of opinion, they are recorded fact.
This incident and the one in Minneapolis are not the same, but they are too similar to ignore.
A member of our community was brutalized under the knee of one of our law enforcement officers.
There is no combination of factors, causes or events leading up to it that make this acceptable or inevitable.
Some people have tried to make this about other things.
To me it is simple. This incident reflects either a failure by the officer or a failure of the underlying policies that allowed it to happen.
And I have to say, this abuse is made far worse when other public servants watch this brutality and write it off as inevitable, justifiable, or commonplace.
Something has to change.
Earlier this week I expressed my outrage and heartbreak over this incident.
I called for answers and accountability. I have been met with screamed obscenities.
Let me be clear: I absolutely believe in the intentions of our police officers. And I believe they are up to the challenge of this moment.
That challenge includes seeing brutality for what it is and calling it out. It includes responding not with defensiveness or diversion but with the voice of service.
It includes working with everyone to build the reforms we need to truly prioritize public safety, community safety and, yes, officer safety.
Because we have safer communities when we have trust, when we can communicate openly, and see we share a common purpose.
This is our community, these are our streets, this is our nation to build and rebuild with each new generation.
As long as this kind of violence is allowed, whether singular incidents or under the protections of policy, it makes building trust impossible. It makes all of us less safe.
We are all hurting.
For some it has lasted four months, for others 400 years.
This COVID pandemic is attacking Black Americans faster, they are dying from it younger and at twice the rate of white Americans.
That is the face of systemic racism.
On the heels of George Floyd’s murder, a bipartisan pair of senators attempted to get an anti-lynching bill passed in the U.S. Senate. It was blocked.
That is the face of systemic racism.
In March, Breonna Taylor was murdered In her sleep, by peace officers, in her own home in Louisville, Kentucky. Her name is one of many, many, too many.
Racial violence is recorded fact, both by incident and across our systems and most venerated institutions. And the wounds it has caused have festered, and new wounds added, for a very long time.
We must find a path here that will allow us to stop these self-inflicted harms, to heal, and begin to repair a long-broken trust.
As a very small part of that effort, I spoke with Chief Clifford on Wednesday. He informed me that the Schenectady Police Department is taking steps to implement reforms and make sure this brutality cannot happen again.
We must ensure that outcome. The practice of knee-to-head must be banned. This incident must receive a full and independent review. Most importantly, the people of this community must have a voice in how our department, and our law enforcement officers, respond.
Because we are, first and foremost, your servants. Our law enforcement officers are officers of the peace. Each one of them puts on the uniform every morning intending to do what is best for this community, to uphold our laws and to keep us all safe.
So when something like this happens, no matter the outcome, it tells me something deeper must be broken.
Let’s do the hard work of looking honestly and openly at what happened here, and what keeps happening, and why.
Let’s not start from the idea that any of us are here to attack or defend. To build trust, and to heal, first we need the truth, we need sunlight, we need accountability, we need reform.
And I will continue to push for those things until I know the members of our community are safe, that their rights are protected, and that new bonds of trust can be built to achieve our common purpose of liberty and justice for all.
Thank you.
Taking Action to Advance Racial Justice in the United States of America
Recently I was proud to join as a cosponsor of H.R. 7120: Justice in Policing Act of 2020, legislation led by Rep. Karen Bass (D-Calif.), who chairs the Congressional Black Caucus, and Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, as well as Sens. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) that would, among other things, ban police chokeholds, restrict “qualified immunity” that prevents police officers from being sued for misconduct, create a national registry to track officers with a history of misconduct, end no-knock warrant use for drug cases and make lynching a federal hate crime.
One piece of legislation cannot cure 400 years of racial violence, injustice and economic oppression. Much of our collective work remains unfinished. However, Congress and the President should move without delay to pass and sign into law the Justice in Policing Act of 2020. The American people are demanding immediate action. Let us heed their call at once.
I also cosponsor a number of the component bills included in this legislation. For example, H.R. 125: The Police Training and Independent Review Act would provide federal funding as an incentive for states to:
Require enrollees at law enforcement academies receive sensitivity training on ethics and racial bias, cultural diversity, and police interaction with the disabled, mentally ill, and new immigrants.
Adopt state laws requiring independent investigations and prosecutions of law enforcement officers in cases where one or more of the alleged offenses involves an officer's use of deadly force in the course of carrying out his or her official duties.
Voting Rights
We are a few short years removed from the harmful Supreme Court decision that struck down a key provision of the Voting Rights Act (VRA). Since then, many states have pounced on the decision, passing legislation that put more barriers to those who already have fragile access to the ballot box. This is America. It shouldn’t be harder to vote, it should be easier to vote. In Congress, I am a cosponsor of legislation that updates the VRA and gives everyone equal opportunity to have their voice heard on Election Day.
I also cosponsored H.R. 1: For the People Act, transformative legislation that passed the House in 2019 that would make voting easier, safer and more representative. Among other things this bill would:
Environmental, Racial & Social Justice
On July 9, 2020, I chaired a hearing on disproportionate environmental impacts related to COVID-19 in his Energy &Commerce Environment Subcommittee, including compelling testimony from national leaders for racial and environmental justice. We have a long road ahead but these conversations need to be happening and we need to start making progress without delay.
I have long advocated for improved health care for incarcerated individuals, a group that is tragically and disproportionately made up of people of color. This passion is the driving force behind the Medicaid Reentry Act, legislation that allows states to restart Medicaid coverage for incarcerated individuals 30 days prior to release, in order to create stronger continuity of care, particularly for mental health and addiction needs, as these individuals transition back into the community.
Systemic Reform & Justice for All
The issues of racial and social injustice are far deeper than just our policing or criminal justice systems generally. I continue to look for other ways to broaden our national awareness and take meaningful steps forward, including cosponsoring H.R. 1636, the Commission on the Social Status of Black Men and Boys Act, a bill from Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-Fla.) that would create a commission to “study the societal forces that have disproportionately impacted black males in America.” The bill has approximately 100 co-sponsors, including one Republican.
I joined some of my colleagues in the New York Congressional Delegation on May 14th, 2020 in calling for a DOJ investigation into the handling of the Ahmaud Arbery case. Transparency and accountability go hand in hand.
I joined with many of my colleagues from all across the nation on June 4th, 2020 in calling for information on the “deployment of Department of Justice (DOJ) law enforcement officers, including personnel from the Bureau of Prisons (BOP), to act against protesters in Washington, D.C. without carrying identifying name plates, official insignia, or agency markings of any kind on their ‘uniforms.’”
In that same spirit, I have also been deeply troubled by recent escalations and abuses by those in political power in Washington, D.C. and beyond. In particular, I felt the need to call out the coordinated attack on peaceful racial justice demonstrators in Lafayette Park outside the White House, an attack orchestrated to stage a photo opportunity of the President awkwardly holding a bible in the air in front of a nearby church.
‘Everything he has done is to inflame violence.’ Those are not my words, they are the expression of the Episcopal Bishop of the Diocese of Washington in response to President Trump’s physical assault on these peaceful demonstrators.
This horrifying attack violated the most fundamental of freedoms enshrined in our Constitution, the right to free speech and peaceful assembly.
I encourage President Trump to open the bible he held up as a prop outside the church. In it, he would find a verse from Micah 6:8; “what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”
May we as a nation work toward justice, denounce violence, love kindness and walk humbly, but hurriedly, on the path to creating a more perfect union.
