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Today's EC from DC is a special one. It's not about me, or what's going on in Washington, DC, or what we see on the news. It's about six promising young people from our community.
Moving in the Right Direction
Last week brought good news about our economy. Jobs numbers are up. Manufacturing is up. The unemployment rate is down. This is good news. By the numbers:
Dear Friends,
We play this trick on ourselves — falling back and springing forward — but our time here is of course limited. Each morning, as the day begins, all of us receive a deposit of 86,400 seconds to spend. Think about it: 604,800 seconds a week or 2,592,000 a month.
How would you handle the daily deposit? My friends, in the bank of time there is a deposit made in our account of 86,400 seconds each morning. We in Congress have this precious time to spend improving the lives of 320 million Americans, whom we pledge to protect and serve.
Today, U.S. Representative Emanuel Cleaver, II (MO-05) in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of Selma, and in response to the tragic events of Ferguson, announced his plan to introduce a bill to ban criminal and traffic law enforcement activities motivated by revenue raising purposes.
What's at Stake
This week, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the Affordable Care Act case of King v. Burwell. The case involves a challenge to providing premium tax credits to consumers who receive Affordable Care Act insurance coverage in states using Federally Facilitated Marketplaces.
An adverse ruling would strip millions of Americans of health coverage, throw insurance markets into turmoil, and have widespread ripple effects.
Last week, former Republican DHS Secretaries Tom Ridge and Michael Chertoff urged the GOP to pass a clean measure to fund DHS and then debate immigration policy separately.
Today, in remarks to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), Congressman Emanuel Cleaver, II (D-MO) commended the Bureau in its effort to make markets for consumer financial products and services work for all Americans, and urged the CFPB to remain steadfast in efforts to protect consumers.
Dear Friends,
A Kansas City jury had been out a week and struggling to get the twelfth juror, the only holdout, to convict. At 6:00 pm the court officer entered the jury room and asked the foreman for the jury’s food orders. “What shall I bring the jury for dinner?”
“Make it eleven fish plates and one bale of hay!” someone yelled.
My first babysitter was the Reverend Noah Albert Cleaver, my great-grandfather. He took care of my oldest sister and me every day after preschool. He lived to be 103 years old. I was in college when he died. He was born in Cherokee County, Texas, and he died in Ellis County, Texas. He never voted, not one time in 103 years. Because if he wanted to vote, he had to pay $3.50 in a poll tax. And that was a lot of money back then.
A Helping Hand
When I look back to how my family got to where we are now, it was the help we received from the government, living in public housing, for six years, until my father could save enough money to buy a home. There are tens of thousands of other stories, just like that, where people needed a helping hand, received a helping hand, and now they use their time to extend that hand to help others.