November 2009 Archives
Jobs
(Earlier today, Rep. Miller sent this email message to his constituents. To sign up for the Miller e-newsletter, go to georgemiller.house.gov).
Dear Friend,
As Congress moves toward completing health insurance reform and climate change legislation, we are also continuing to work hard on other steps to rescue the economy and get Americans back to work.
This week, I held several meetings with my colleagues regarding another package of bills designed to create jobs quickly. Our goal is to save and create jobs now while positioning the economy for long-term growth.
In fact, everything we have done this year has been geared toward jobs and the economy. Already, we’ve enacted major initiatives to create jobs and build a robust and modern economy. And we’re seeing positive technical indications, like improvements in the GDP, that the recession is slowing. But this recession is different and is the most severe downturn since the Great Depression. Millions of people are still out of work, businesses have shed jobs at faster pace than ever, and furloughs and underemployment continue. The pain being felt by families across America is deep. We need to, and we will, do more to revive the economy and create jobs.
As we put together this next jobs package, we are looking at every possible avenue, including the green energy sector, transportation projects, the housing market, education, public sector jobs, tax policy, and other areas. We have not made any final decisions yet – except that we are committed to moving quickly and forcefully on the jobs front. I’ll keep you posted.
Sincerely,
George Miller
Posted by Peake, Amy at 08:54PM | Comments () | TrackBack (0)
Live from Pakistan
Congressman George Miller was in Pakistan last week and sent this first-hand report.
DAY ONE:
With the excitement of passing the health care reform bill still echoing in my ears, I left Washington on Monday night for Pakistan -- my third trip in a year to this region that is so important to American security interests.
Along with three other members of Congress, we came here to review the effort against the Taliban, who continue to attack our troops in Afghanistan, to look into the extent to which the Pakistani government is willing to be helpful to the United States, and to check on the effectiveness of restrictions that Congress put on the use of American military aid by the Pakistan military. The previous Administration was letting Pakistani generals use our money like their personal piggybank. It appears now that there are better controls and the money is being used to train the military and fight the Taliban.
We arrived in Pakistan at 2:00 am Wednesday (local time). We started our meetings with the U.S. Ambassador and American intelligence officials for a briefing on efforts to find and destroy the Taliban in both Pakistan and Afghanistan. We also met with the Pakistani Prime Minister and Foreign Minister to discuss the impact of American efforts in Afghanistan and the impact on Pakistan. There seems to be a split in the government about the likelihood of the success of our efforts. We finished by having dinner with a friend from the lawyers’ movement that took to the streets earlier this year to save democracy in Pakistan from a corrupt Supreme Court and a military dictator. As you may know, they were successful in getting rid the corrupt judges and the dictator. New elections were held, at great personal risk to those involved.
DAY TWO:
Thursday morning we took a helicopter for an hour north of Islamabad to Peshawar to visit a displaced persons camp. Since the fighting began last year almost 2.5 million Pakistanis have been forced to leave their homes due to the violence. We met with refugees and humanitarian workers.
It was very hard to see so many families and children forced to live in such distress. The international aid community does an unbelievable job to help these people. We were fortunate to be able to deliver over $400,000 in medical supplies from the people of the United States for the displaced Pakistanis. We were also able to deliver invaluable medical pressure packs that have been remarkable in savings the lives of our troops and civilians injured by roadside bombs and other explosives. Our delivery came none too soon; as we were doing this, a bomb killed 3 people while we were in Peshawar, a grim reminder of the daily threat to civilians’ lives here.
With additional security we continued our meetings with government officials and then flew back to Islamabad to meet with USAID representatives to discuss building schools for girls and training teachers so young people will have an alternative to the Madrassas (schools) set up by the Jihadists. It was a very long day but we learned a lot and I think we did some good in a tough part of the world with a lot of violence and suffering.
Posted by Peake, Amy at 07:36PM | Comments () | TrackBack (0)
A Letter to America's Veterans on Veteran's Day
Letter to America's Veterans 11-2009.pdf
Posted by Intern, CA07 at 09:56PM | Comments () | TrackBack (0)
