Far too many American families are struggling day to day to afford the cost of health insurance.  Today, there are nearly forty-seven million Americans who don’t have health insurance.  What is even more appalling is that approximately nine million of those who are uninsured are children.

This disturbing statistic would undoubtedly be worse if it were not for the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). Thanks to SCHIP, the percentage of low-income children in the United States without health insurance has fallen by one-fourth since it was created in 1997.  More than six million low-income children, most of whom would otherwise be uninsured, are enrolled in SCHIP.

While the program has largely been a success, it is now being threatened.  Last year, for the first time since 1998, the number of uninsured children in the country actually increased. The most immediate and glaring problem is the lack of funding for SCHIP. Simply stated, more money is needed in order to ensure the viability of this program and to cover more kids. Read the rest of this entry »

Credit card holders are being overridden with fees such as transfer fees, membership fees, finance fees, over-limit fees, cash advance fees, stop payment order fees, interchange fees and the list goes on and on. Now some credit card companies have resorted to socking consumers with fees for paying bills over the Internet or by phone, which is outrageous. As the number of fees that credit card customers are being charged increases to near astronomical levels, we must act to ensure that American consumers are not entrapped by their credit card companies.

Iran has over 20 intermediate range missiles, these 20 BM-25 missiles were purchased from North Korea in 2005, which are Soviet SS-N-6 submarine ballistic missiles and have a range beyond 3,000 kilometers.

The leadership of Iran declared their intent last week to build and launch orbital satellites. This type of ballistic technology would give Iran the capability to deliver payloads to anyplace on earth, as was first powerfully demonstrated 50 years ago by the Soviet Union’s launch of Sputnik in 1957.

A third site defensive missile site in Europe would need to be placed in Central Europe to offer protection to all of continental Europe against Iranian intermediate and long range ballistic missiles as well as future missile threats from the Middle East. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve long called for the creation of a one stop shop for travelers to
resolve watch list misidentification problems. H.R. 1, the 9/11 bill passed in
January, addressed this issue.  I hope DHS Trip is the first of many steps
that the Department takes to protect our Constitutional rights and
liberties.

Last August I was part of a bipartisan delegation that toured the U.S.-Mexico border in Laredo, Texas, to get a first-hand look at the challenges facing efforts to secure the border. My Homeland Security Committee colleagues and I noted some pressing needs. Border security is paramount. We must establish operational control of our borders and enforce the laws that are expected of a sovereign nation.

While at Laredo I was particularly disturbed and surprised to learn that the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) does not have access to enough aviation assets to help them counter the influx of illegal immigrants, drug smugglers and other lawbreakers migrating across the Rio Grande. At a time when we also face a threat from terrorists who wish to infiltrate our country, this situation is totally unacceptable.

While our border security faces this lack of air support, the American homeland is already served by a skilled volunteer force of pilots, the Civil Air Patrol. CAP is the official civilian auxiliary of the United States Air Force.

Founded at the outbreak of the Second World War, the Civil Air Patrol has provided an important service to the homeland. During the war they were a vital watchdog along the coastlines of America, protecting us from the threat of German U-boats that patrolled our shores. Read the rest of this entry »

Over the past decade the percentage of low-income American children who are uninsured has dropped by one-third, thanks in large part to the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), which Congress created in 1997.  And SCHIP, along with its sister program Medicaid, has accomplished this at reasonable cost:  these programs cost less per beneficiary than private insurance, on average.

In his new budget, President Bush proposes to reauthorize SCHIP, which is scheduled to expire this year.  But he fails to give states enough funds simply to maintain their current enrollment — let alone to expand coverage to the millions of low-income children who still lack it.

Under the President’s budget, states would have $7 billion less in federal SCHIP funding over the next five years than they need just to continue insuring as many beneficiaries as they do now.  By 2012, some 46 states would face a total shortfall of $2.9 billion.  That’s equivalent to the cost of covering 1.4 million children. Read the rest of this entry »

On Thursday we had a meeting at the Iranian Foreign Ministry headquarters, in some of the most beautiful and historic buildings I have ever visited. I wish I were able to send a picture to show you all the beautiful architecture and attention to detail in the craftsmanship of the building. Our meeting was with the Deputy Foreign Minister for Europe and the United States, a very senior level official in the Iranian government.

The meeting was held in a grand ballroom in the main building at the Foreign Ministry, and we were told that we were the first American delegation to have an official meeting in this building since the Islamic Revolution in 1978. The meeting did have a certain formality and historic feeling to it. The amazing thing was that the Deputy Foreign Minister spent over two hours with our delegation, both making statements and asking questions.

There were a couple important lessons that I took away from this meeting. First of all, the Deputy Foreign Minister is just a few months younger than me, so I felt an immediate connection with him. As he spoke of the history of relations between our nations, it was clear that the narrative and experiences he was speaking from were very different from my own. For him, the relationship between Iran and the United States begins in 1953, when the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) helped to overthrow their elected leader (Mossadegh) and install the Shah. For Dr. Jalili and most of the Iranians we have spoken to here, there is a great deal of pain associated with the 25-year reign of the Shah that ended in 1978 in the Islamic Revolution led by Ayatollah Khomeini. The Shah was a very oppressive dictator who ruled with an iron fist. Read the rest of this entry »

On Friday Transportation Secretary Mary Peters unveiled a dangerous experiment. The DOT wants to give 100 Mexican trucking firms full access to U.S. highways.

On the surface you can see why the Teamsters would be against this. It’s one more step in the Bush agenda to export good paying American jobs to a foreign country where corporations can fatten their bottom lines by exploiting cheap labor, lax environmental standards and nonexistent safety regulations.

This is about safety, not immigration, not race.

It’s about being able to drive down the road with your family and not have to worry about whether the driver in that 18-wheeler in the next lane has slept in the past 20 hours. It’s about whether that truck is safe to operate at 65 or 70 miles an hour. It’s about whether you can trust anything the Bush administration and Mexican government says. Read the rest of this entry »

Although the Bank of America claims its new policy of issuing credit cards to clients without Social Security numbers is not aimed at illegal aliens, its acceptance of Mexican consular ID cards as part of this initiative clearly belies that claim. Besides the Mexican ID the bank collects Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers (ITINs). The ITINs are authorized by the IRS only for collecting and paying taxes – not extending credit. So the B of A action clearly is contrary to government policy.

What will happen? The federal government will probably do nothing as long as it is pushing for legal status (amnesty) for the B of A clients. Congress may curb the practice with new legislation, but that is unlikely if there is again a deadlock on immigration legislation.

However, B of A shareholders should be nervous. Not only is the new policy earning the bank lots of bad publicity – except among the illegal alien population and their supporters – and causing patrons to shift their funds elsewhere, but the new practice by the bank exposes it to significant financial loss when and if its clients get picked up by the immigration authorities and deported. Will the alien say, “Give me a couple of days so I can pay my debt to my bankâ€?? Read the rest of this entry »