Beyond the headlines, Congress is getting results for Tennesseans
I
often suggest Tennesseans look at Washington, D.C., as if it were a
split-screen television. On one side, you hear about impeachment and
tweets, but, on the other side, you have members of Congress working
together to get results. And in 2019, we’ve done just that. We’ve passed legislation that President
Trump has signed into law to provide permanent funding for Historically
Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and other minority serving
institutions, simplify the Federal Application for Federal Student Aid --
or FAFSA form -- 400,000 Tennessee families fill out every year to
qualify for student aid, provide our troops with the biggest pay raise
in 10 years, encourage drug competition, raise the tobacco age to 21
and provide record-funding for our 17 national laboratories and
supercomputing. Congress has also confirmed five Tennesseans who were
President Trump’s nominees. And, as chairman of the Senate
Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, I’ve worked to pass
21 bills in our committee, including new laws that will ensure we are
better prepared for public health threats such as wildfires,
hurricanes, or bioterror attacks and to help us better understand diseases and
disorders including Lyme disease, approved 51 of the president’s
nominees and held 13 hearings hearing on topics that impact the lives
of every American, including e-cigarettes and vaping, the importance
of vaccines, and updating the Higher Education Act to ensure students
are earning degrees worth their time and
money.
It’s been quite a year, and you can learn more about what
we’ve been able to accomplish HERE and HERE.
President Trump signs into law
legislation that will lower Americans’ health care
costs
The U.S. Senate passed, and the
president signed into law, legislation that takes several
important steps to address Americans’ number one financial concern:
what they pay out of their own pockets for health
care.
The new law includes five provisions
from my bipartisan legislation the Lower Health Care Costs
Act -- including the CREATES Act, which will increase generic
drug competition and lower the cost of drugs -- as well as two
provisions to increase biological drug competition and lower drug costs,
including in the insulin market, Tobacco-21, which will raise purchasing
age of tobacco to 21, and the Kay Hagan Tick Act to better protect
Americans from diseases transmitted by ticks, mosquitoes and fleas.
But there is
more we need to do. I will continue working with my colleagues in the
New Year to end surprise medical billing, deliver long-term funding for
the nation’s 1,400 community health centers -- including the 29
in Tennessee -- lower the cost of prescription drugs, and bring more
transparency to the health care market.
I’ve enjoyed spending some time
with Payton, who is a junior in high school from
Brentwood and has been serving as a U.S. Senate Page this semester. Thank
you for your impressive work and service,
Payton!
President
Trump, Congress give troops biggest pay raise in 10
years
The U.S. Senate passed legislation Tuesday that
gives the military the biggest pay raise in 10 years. President Trump has
signed this bill into law, which
authorizes $738 billion to fund the U.S. Department of Defense
and the Department of Energy.
Governing is about setting
priorities, and this bill shows our priority is the men and women who serve
in our armed forces. This defense bill authorizes pay raises for
troops at Ft. Campbell, Arnold Air Force Base in Tullahoma and
the Naval Support Activity Mid-South in Millington, and continues to
make research and development of new technologies a priority so our
military can deal with new and emerging threats. The new law improves housing and increases employment opportunities for military
spouses. This new law also, for the first time, provides two months
of paid family leave for all federal employees, which Ivanka Trump and
the President worked to include in the bill. This legislation
will also strengthen our national security by supporting important
programs at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge to help
modernize and maintain our nuclear weapons arsenal.
The Foothills Parkway is one of the
prettiest drives in America. So, it’s no surprise
that the Great Smoky
Mountains National Park is crediting the drive for breaking the park’s record for the
number of visitors, estimating there will be
12 million visitors by the end of the year. I enjoy visiting the Foothills
Parkway any time I can – which most recently was when we dedicated
the new Dean Stone Bridge.
President Trump signs legislation into law that will help
Tennessee students and families
This week, I was
with President Trump at the White House to talk about the FUTURE Act --
bipartisan legislation I sponsored that will help Tennessee students and
families.
First, it provides permanent funding, fully
paid for, for Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and
other minority serving institutions attended by over two
million minority students. Second, after five years of bipartisan effort,
the measure also simplifies the Federal Application for Student Aid (FAFSA) and removes the
most important roadblock for the 20 million Americans,
including 400,000 Tennessee families, who apply for federal grants and
loans to attend college.
Last week, the
president of Lane College -- one of six HBCUs in Tennessee -- told me that he
has three staff members who spend a significant amount of time helping
the 40 percent of Lane College students who are currently selected
for verification each year, a
complicated bureaucratic process that stops a student’s Pell
grant payments while they send their tax information
to the U.S. Department of Education. This legislation greatly reduces this burden on his students and
their families and allows the staff to spend their time counseling
students about academics or jobs, instead of helping them fill out a
form.
President Trump signed this important legislation into
law, giving a Christmas present to HBCUs and millions of students
and their families.
The rain didn’t stop us from
breaking ground on the Saint Thomas Sports Park expansion last Friday. I’m grateful
the Tennessee Titans continue to invest in the Nashville community and
bring even more jobs to Middle Tennessee.
President Trump, Congress provide
record-funding for 17 national laboratories,
supercomputing
The best-kept secret
in Washington is record-funding for the Office of Science, which funds
our national laboratories and supercomputing. The
legislation the Senate passed
Thursday will provide record-level funding for the
fifth-consecutive year for our 17 national laboratories. Our national
laboratories are our secret weapons, which is why I’ve worked hard as
chairman of the U.S. Senate Energy and Water Development
Appropriations Subcommittee to help increase funding for the Office of Science
by 38 percent over the last 5 years. The legislation also
includes $230 million for the first year of a new advanced reactor
demonstration program, which will build at least 2 advanced reactors over the
next 5-7 years.
This bill
includes funding to keep America number one in the world in supercomputing
and build the next generation of supercomputers. The funding in this
bill will also modernize our nuclear weapons facilities at Y-12 and
accelerate cleanup of hazardous materials and facilities at the East
Tennessee Technology Park, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the Y-12
National Security Complex, which is building the largest federal
construction project in Tennessee since World War
II.
Our legislation also includes $7.65 billion -- a new record funding
level in a regular appropriations bill -- for the U.S. Army
Corps of Engineers to maintain and rebuild our nation’s waterways,
including up to $94.5 million to fully fund construction at Chickamauga
Lock for the sixth consecutive year. This is great news for East
Tennessee since the new lock will help keep up to 150,000 trucks off I-75
and keep the cost of shipping goods low for manufacturers across the
state. Finally, our bill includes up to $2.163 million for dredging the
Memphis Harbor McKellar Lake.
This is an
important bill for our country and for Tennessee, and I’m glad
President Trump signed it into law. Funding these priorities is not the cause
of the runaway federal debt. These priorities are funded in the
portion of the budget that only increases at about the rate of
inflation.
Below are some
articles from this week I thought you would
enjoy:
Chattanooga Times Free Press: Alexander touts elimination
of 'bureaucratic nightmare' provision on student federal college aid
applications
Kaiser Health News: Surprising Swings In
Momentum For Legislation On Surprise Medical
Bills
Ed Week:
What the FAFSA Simplification Trump Signed Means for
Students
Remember that the family is
the basic unit of society.
#162 in Lamar
Alexander’s Little Plaid Book
