EC from DC - September 12, 2014

CONGRESSMAN CLEAVER ANNOUNCES MILLION DOLLAR BOOST FOR TRANSPORTATION

A strong, safe, and reliable transportation infrastructure is critical to all of us – red, blue, urban, suburban, and rural. Increasing access to jobs and opportunities, while ensuring our economic prosperity and vitality, is of paramount importance. With this in mind, I am pleased to share with you news of a $1.2 million grant from the Department of Transportation (DOT) to the Mid-America Regional Council (MARC).

The money will be used to fund KC Workforce Connex, focusing on using public transit to improve the connection between jobs and housing, and to involve the community in the overall effort. The initiative will be led by the region's Transit Coordinating Council, and will lay the foundation needed to get a comprehensive understanding of the challenges faced by those in Missouri's Fifth District, when it comes to finding public transportation to get to available jobs. A strong emphasis will be placed on bringing together regional partnerships to find common-sense solutions, and in the next decade, to double the number of regional jobs that are accessible by transit.

In the end, the goal is that the initiative will have:

1. Developed a plan for extending the region's corridor and transit service framework to connect and link underserved and emerging job markets.
2. Developed specific east‐west, bi‐state, transit service strategies that will better connect our region and help bridge current service, jurisdictional boundaries, and job access gaps.
3. Developed a holistic job‐access strategy that goes beyond public transit to include a range of transportation alternatives.
4. Outlined supportive land use and housing policies and local actions necessary to improve jobs/housing balance and better position future growth to be serviceable by public transportation.

DID YOU KNOW??

1. CEOs make more in an hour than fast food cooks make in a day.
2. Income inequality can have a big impact on students' education.
3. Early education can add up to one year of additional learning.
4. The Paycheck Fairness Act ensures effective protection against sex-based pay discrimination.

Not only protecting, but proactively jumpstarting the middle class is a priority of mine. This country's middle class is the backbone of our nation, and we must create more good-paying jobs, support equal pay for women, and make a college education affordable.

Over August, we received good economic news with the addition of 142,000 jobs. Along with that, the unemployment rate dropped to 6.1%. We continue to move in the right direction, but we must work to move faster, and to do more.

We can do that by:

Raising the minimum wage to $10.10/hour

Making sure workers have access to affordable child care and guaranteed paid sick leave by enacting the Healthy Families Act

Strengthening the Violence Against Women Act

TOMORROW marks the 20th anniversary of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA). That law has been critically important in our country, but, as we know, we still have a long way to go. In the last two decades VAWA has meant more services to victims, more police involvement with perpetrators, and more lives saved.

MEETING WITH CREDIT UNION REPRESENTATIVES IN KANSAS CITY

Credit unions are an important option for many consumers, and they serve more than 1.4 million Missourians. I truly enjoyed meeting with the Missouri Credit Union Association recently in my Kansas City office.

CIVILITY CORNER

A member of the U.S. House of Representatives wanted to show the new pastor of the church, to which he and his family belonged, how his stewardship had changed the landscape in his congressional district. He picked the pastor up at the parsonage and quickly pointed out that the bridge they crossed was a million dollar earmark, which he secured. Soon they came to a veteran's shelter, "Pastor, I thought that it was an insult to our brave boys and girls who went into battle for this nation and returned home only to sleep on the streets, so I helped get a sizeable grant to build this shelter, which the good people who operate this facility named in my honor."

After a drive across town, the congressman pointed out the light rail central station and began waxing poetically, "I was expungeably fruitful in wrestling about 45 million from the Department of Transportation, and I am working on another big chunk of dollars to get it finished." The sufficiently proud congressman then drove to a community health center which he explained was built with his good work in the Capitol. Finally, the congressman said, "Reverend, this is just a short look at what I have done…so what do you think?" The pastor paused for a few seconds and said, "While all this good work is fabulous, if tomorrow you die, is it enough to bring folks out to your funeral on a rainy day?"

To be sure, the work each of us does to improve the lives of those around us is essential; and most of us want to be long remembered for changing, for the better, those we serve. But as George Washington wisely noted, "It should be the highest ambition of every American to extend his views beyond himself, and to bear in mind that his conduct will not only affect himself, his country, and his immediate posterity; but that its influence may be co-extensive with the world, and stamp political happiness or misery on ages yet unborn."

Years later, after we have gone and the fruits of our labor have passed, how will we have influenced this great nation? Will we join our Founding Fathers and help push our great experiment in democracy to its zenith, or fail to hear the foreboding chorus, ever increasing its raucous roar?