Blog Post

The 111th Congress had a strong start and accomplished a great deal in the first five months. In a recent op-ed in Roll Call, Congressional scholar Norman Ornstein wrote: "This Congress has been as active and productive as any I can remember. The number of major bills passed and enacted into law, the serious, sustained activity in areas of broad, complex and critical importance, all are truly impressive."________________________________________________________________________

This month, the House made significant strides in its efforts to rebuild the economy to immediately help families and provide for long-term growth. Some of the most important legislation passed and signed in recent days includes the Credit Cardholders' Bill of Rights Act, the Helping Families Save Their Homes Act, and the Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act.________________________________________________________________________

This is a transformative time for America's energy policy. That's not because the problems are new-in fact, they date back decades, decades during which we ignored the carbon content of our energy sources. We have put our environment at risk and deepened our dependence on foreign fuel sources. What makes this moment transformative is a window of political opportunity.________________________________________________________________________

Last winter, President Obama took office facing challenges unparalleled in recent memory-particularly an economy in steep decline. Since then, he and the Democratic-led Congress have taken a wide range of measures to end this historic recession and return our economy to prosperity.________________________________________________________________________

In 1970, an ad was published in The New York Times to publicize the first Earth Day. It stated, "Earth Day is a commitment to make life better, not just bigger and faster; to provide real rather than rhetorical solutions. It is a day to re-examine the ethic of individual progress at mankind's expense.________________________________________________________________________

Congress's debate on the federal budget this week provided a vital opportunity to confront the severity of our country's fiscal condition. For years under the previous Administration, we put off a reckoning, and now our nation is constrained by trillions in debt and billions in interest payments.________________________________________________________________________

Its the principle behind every clearance sale: The less a product is in demand, the less it sells for. Its why you can find the cheapest winter coats in March and the cheapest new cars at the end of a model year. So why cant we extend the same principle to the most basic commodity of allelectricity?________________________________________________________________________

This week, Congress debates President Obamas plan to restore our economy and stop the hemorrhaging of American jobs that has pushed national unemployment to its highest level in 16 years. Since the start of the recession in December 2007, more than three and a half million American jobs have been lost, half of those coming in the last three months. Last month alone, the economy lost almost 600,000 jobs thats the equivalent of losing one out of every four jobs in the State of Maryland.________________________________________________________________________