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Washington, DC – United States Congresswoman Gwen Moore (D-Milwaukee) spoke in Washington, DC this morning as the National Trust for Historic Preservation named the National Soldiers Home Historic District one of the eleven most endangered historic places in the country. Congresswoman Moore said, “These buildings have served veterans since the Civil War.  They are a […]

Last week Congresswoman Gwen Moore (D-Milwaukee) wrote Governor Scott Walker and implored him to stop any efforts that jeopardize Federal funding for food stamps.

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has written to Wisconsin Health Services Secretary Dennis Smith informing him that proposed changes to FoodShare Wisconsin puts at risk Federal funding Wisconsin receives for food stamps. Just last week, USDA asked for a plan of corrective action as to how Wisconsin will scale back privatization efforts. If the state does not, USDA will suspend funds.
 
In her letter to Walker, Moore emphasizes that nearly 800,000 Wisconsinites rely on Federal funding to help feed their families, and all the resources used by Wisconsin families participating in Food- Share Wisconsin come from Federal dollars.

Small businesses are the backbone of our economy.  Nearly two out of every three jobs are created by small businesses.

If our small businesses are thriving, we will create jobs.  If our small businesses are growing, we will keep our economy moving in the right direction.

This week is Small Business Week, which is the perfect opportunity to reflect on what has been done to support the small business community and to refocus our efforts on helping American small businesses grow.

Madison – Federal officials are threatening to withhold new money and take back previous funds for Wisconsin’s food assistance program if state officials don’t scale back efforts to privatize it.

The letter from federal officials follows an April visit to Wisconsin by U.S. Department of Agriculture staff and goes a step further than similar past warnings by saying the state FoodShare program is already in violation of federal rules because of the privatization efforts by two governors.
Federal officials are also separately questioning a new privatization proposal put forward by Republican Gov. Scott Walker for FoodShare, the successor program to food stamps.
In a Wednesday letter to state Health Services Secretary Dennis Smith, Ollice Holden, a Midwest administrator for the USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service, warned that Wisconsin had overstepped boundaries laid out for the state last year. Failing to fix the problem could lead USDA to suspend payments to the state for administering FoodShare and seek to recover certain money already paid to Wisconsin, he said.

The medical director of the Wisconsin State Laboratory of Hygiene says women will likely die of cervical cancer if Gov. Scott Walker’s budget proposal eliminating $266,400 for cervical cancer screening prevails.

“I see at least 1 – 2 high-grade lesions every day during cytologic evaluations,” Dr. Daniel Kurtycz says in prepared remarks to be given Wednesday to the Joint Finance Committee, which will consider Walker’s budget request. “Without follow-up, there is no doubt that some of these lesions will become invasive. Because cervical cancer takes at least two years to run its course, sometime after 2015, we will have women dying of cervical cancer as a predictable consequence of the funding reduction for testing in this budget.”

WASHINGTON — Rep. Sean Duffy was wrapping up a congressional delegation tour that included a stop in Afghanistan when news broke Sunday night that a U.S. Special Forces team had killed al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, capping a 10-year hunt for the terrorist leader deemed responsible for the deaths of nearly 3,000 people at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.

Duffy, a freshman Republican lawmaker from Ashland, said in a statement Monday that Americans have every right to rejoice over the death of the man who had become the face of terrorism.

“The celebrations and the pride Americans feel today in their military, CIA and government for capturing the world’s most wanted terrorist are appropriate and justified,” Duffy said.

The Democratic women of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) are urging their Senate colleagues to fight harder for reproductive healthcare rights in the District of Columbia.

In a May 3 letter to the Democratic women of the Senate, the CBC members said they were “deeply disappointed” when Democrats agreed last month to a 2011 continuing resolution (CR) that included language barring D.C. from using local taxpayer dollars to fund abortion services for low-income women.

The CBC members said those women were “sacrificed” for the sake of a spending deal, which was negotiated by Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and the White House.

Paul Ryan, a Republican congressman from a Wisconsin district bordering Illinois, has seen his profile skyrocket since he unveiled a plan to cut taxes and spending and scale back Medicare and Medicaid.

Lanky, high energy and conservative, Ryan, 41, won House approval Friday of his proposals, which have made him a fixture on talk shows and a sparring partner to President Barack Obama.

The two men, with homes 115 miles apart in Janesville, Wis., and on Chicago’s South Side, adhere to political ideologies that are worlds apart.

Last week, Ryan was invited to sit in the front row at a speech Obama gave outlining his deficit reduction proposal. From Obama, referring to Ryan’s plan: “There’s nothing serious about a plan that claims to reduce the deficit by spending a trillion dollars on tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires.” Ryan, normally not a grenade thrower, condemned the president’s talk as “excessively partisan, dramatically inaccurate and hopelessly inadequate.” Why does he want to cut a popular program like Medicare? His short answer is that he’s trying to ensure the program is solvent for his kids, ages 6, 7 and 9, and their kids.

Washington – Calling for deep domestic cuts and a wholesale makeover of Medicare and Medicaid, Paul Ryan’s 2012 budget plan was adopted Friday by the GOP majority in the House, a defining congressional vote that could leave a powerful stamp on future elections.

Passage of the Ryan budget reflects a new and striking Republican consensus that massive entitlement changes are a fiscal imperative and a political message that average voters may now be ready to hear.

“Will we be remembered as the Congress that did nothing as the nation sped toward a preventable debt crisis and an irreversible decline, or as the Congress that did the hard work of preventing a crisis? . . . This is our defining moment,” said Ryan, the House budget chairman from Janesville, as he concluded the floor debate.

“Where is the shared sacrifice?” asked Maryland Democrat Chris Van Hollen, who said pulling back aid to the elderly and poor while exempting defense from the budget ax and wealthy Americans from paying more was “the same old ideological agenda, except this time on steroids.”

Harley Davidson Museum Riverwalk on 6th and Canal Street will be a location where all will be welcomed to Celebrate Earth Day. The event is free, beginning at 5 pm until 7 pm, activities will take place by the 6th Street Viaduct Bridge or the Hank Aaron Bike Trail. Activities planned include: The Eco- Puppet