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Friends, 

Throughout the last month, my focus has remained on shoring up supply chains and continuing to lower prices for Iowans. I have been hard at work introducing legislation and leading the call to make changes that will continue to lower prices for Iowans, prevent potential future supply chain shortages and improve health insurance plans for Iowa's small businesses.

I know how important it is to continue this work as we enter into the Holiday season, so I will continue to fight for you.

Putting An End To OPEC+ Gas Price Fixing

I teamed up with Rep. Susan Wild in writing to House Leadership pushing for action to weaken the power of the Russian and Saudi Arabian-led group OPEC+, which announced in October it was cutting oil production quotas for member nations by 2 million barrels per day, causing prices to rise and helping Russia finance its war in Ukraine. 

In the letter, we urged House leadership to take up the No Oil Producing and Exporting Cartels Act (NOPEC) Act for a vote to prevent price fixing by OPEC+ and restrain the organizations power over the global oil supply. 

Lowering The Cost Of Health Insurance For Iowa's Small Businesses

I am leading the charge in pushing the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Agency (CMS) to improve health insurance options for small businesses to help keep costs low for Iowa businesses that provide good-quality health insurance options for their employees by revitalizing the Small Business Health Options Program, or SHOP.

SHOP has fallen well short of the Congressional Budget Office’s projected participation, reaching less than 10 percent of its goal. In addition, twenty-eight of the fifty SHOP exchanges currently have no plans available, including Iowa’s.

As a small business owner, I know how hard it is to find affordable health care plans, so I wrote a letter to CMS inquiring about what they can do to make a SHOP plan available for small businesses in Iowa and more generally support more affordable options for small businesses to offer healthcare to their employees.

Protecting Workers' Wages

As soon as I read Common Good Iowa's report that wage theft is costing an estimated 250,000 Iowa workers more than $904 million annually, I sent a letter to Iowa Workforce Development Director Beth Townsend asking for more information about the policies and penalties that are in place at the IWD to combat wage theft.

Common Good Iowa's new report found that Iowa workers are shorted an average of $300 per week through minimum wage and overtime wage violations, in which workers are paid less than they are due according to federal minimum wage and overtime standards.

These wage theft practices must end, because hardworking Iowans deserve to receive every cent they earned.

Shoring Up The Baby Formula Supply Chain 

This year, we saw what could happen when critical formula production plants like the Abbott plant in Michigan shut down. More than 40 percent of the nation's supply of baby formula was out of stock by May. 

That's why I joined Rep. Mikie Sherrill in writing a letter to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in writing a letter to request answers as to how the FDA will work to prevent future critical formula food shortages.

In our letter, we asked the FDA what they are doing to ensure families never face an infant formula shortage again so families never face fear or uncertainty about how they will feed their babies again.

There is still a lot of work to be done in Congress and I will continue to fight as hard as I can.

Be well, 

Cindy