Houlahan Joins Bi-Partisan Effort for Better Breast Cancer Screenings for U.S. Servicemembers

U.S. Rep. Chrissy Houlahan

Blogger's Note: The following was provided by the office of U.S. Rep. Chrissy Houlahan.

Local U.S. Rep Chrissy Houlahan, D-6th Dist. has joined a bipartisan and bicameral effort to improve breast cancer screenings for U.S. servicemembers.

She joined and U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-NY, and Senators Martha McSally, R-AZ, and Jeanne Shaheen, D-NH, in introducing the  Better and Robust Screening Today (BRST) Act.

The Better and Robust Screening Today Act requires the Department of Defense to cover the most effective breast cancer screening option: Digital Breast Tomosynthesis, also known as DBT or 3D mammography. DBT is already covered by the Department of Veterans Affairs and almost all other traditional health care plans. Currently, the defense department only covers DBT as a secondary option, after there is an issue with the first, traditional scan.

“Our active duty servicemembers, military family members, and veterans should have access to quality health care,” said Houlahan. “The BRST Act marks an important step in addressing the gaps in TRICARE, which covers millions in our military community. DBT Mammography is the best screening for breast cancer we have for women with dense breast tissue. TRICARE should include coverage for this service so that both those who’ve served and their families have the best chance at early detection. I’m proud of this bipartisan and bicameral legislation borne from the minds of women veterans in Congress.”

The number of women in the Armed Forces continues to grow at a rapid pace. In 1973, at the end of the draft, women represented a mere two percent of the enlisted forces and eight percent of the officer corps. Today, those numbers have significantly increased to 16 percent and 18 percent respectively.

Click here to read the Better and Robust Screening Today Act.

On July 19th, Houlahan led a letter that was signed by 50 bipartisan Members of Congress to the Honorable Thomas McCaffery, the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs urging the Military Health System (MHS) to address the disparity in breast cancer screening coverage that is putting the lives of our nation’s servicemembers, military family members, and veterans at risk.

The Sixth District includes all of Chester County and a portion of southeast Berks County.

The Higher Cost of Higher Education

I've been sitting here noodling for some time over how to write a post about what
I see as the undermining of education, public education in particular, without taking sides politically.

All too often, once you declare belief or support for one solution or another espoused by a particular party or "faction" as the Founding Fathers used to call them, anyone on "the other side" stops listening to anything you have to say on the subject.

As I twisted and turned the logic, trying to find a non-partisan path through the various issues to bring the reader to a conclusion that, as a nation, we need to invest in education if we are to have a future -- I realized that is the problem.

There is no non-partisan path, or if there is, I can't find it.

Nonetheless, I will give it a try here.

What got me started on this was the news that (surprise!) Congress can't agree on a way to keep down interest rates on college loans.

Full disclosure, I've got some skin in this game.

My son enters high school next year and despite what some of you might think, a reporter's salary is not something which allows for either a lot of savings for a college fund, or for paying up front the ever-increasing, ridiculously obscene tuition at all but a few schools.

So, there weren't many scenarios for funding his college education in which the words "student loan" were not present.

Sadly, the more I looked into it, the darker the picture became.

The latest news I could find Saturday was from July 11, when the Minnesota Daily reported that the Senate is going "back to the drawing board," to try to come up with some way to keep the rates from staying at the 6.8 percent rate they jumped to July 1 due to Congressional inaction.

Previously, the rates had been at 3.4 percent, for subsidized loans from the government.

These fixed-rate loans are aimed at undergraduates who attend schools that cost more than their families can pay, according to the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

"If Congress doesn’t act soon, Congress’ Joint Economic Committee says it could cost an extra $2,600 per student for those taking subsidized Stafford loans this fall," the Minnesota Daily reported.

The 6.8 percent rate has been the same for un-subsidized loans, which CNN says are used much more, since 2007.

CNN also says:

Student loan debt has skyrocketed in recent years, as have delinquencies, making it a pressing political and financial issue for millions of Americans. Many young graduates are deep in debt and without jobs.

Student loan debt is second only to mortgages as the largest debt that

consumers carry.

For the class of 2013, much of the debt is in government loans with graduates owing an average of $26,000, according to a Fidelity survey of 750 college graduates.

According to BuzzFeed, student loan debt in America has reached $1 trillion, $85 billion of which is past due.

With the rise of rates, 10 million students nationwide will lose $1,000 per year from the higher rates, which would cover a semester of text books, or six months of a college meal plan.

The fact that 60 percent of all college students take on some kind of loan debt, one has to ask why students, the future leaders of the nation, are facing an 8 percent interest rate when banks are only paying three-quarters of one percent, their reward, apparently, for trashing the nation's economy in 2009?

But this debate about loans is a sideshow to the real problem -- college costs too much, at least for a country that hopes to stay in the lead in producing the nation's top scientists, economists, business experts and teachers.

The increase has become even worse in the last 20 years.

The cost of attending a four-year public institution has gone up by 5.2 percent each year in the last decade - far more than the inflation rate and costs for other basics, according to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

The rise has occurred as university administrative costs have steadily climbed and as cash-strapped states cut funding to public colleges. That has pushed more of the cost burden on students, Brookings Institution economist Barry Bosworth told Reuters in this June 27 article.

Reuters also reported:

Analysts say neither lower interest rates or repayment systems address the major problem: the lump sum of debt students leave school with and the toll it takes on their finances.

So far, the federal government has had limited success in pressuring states to control the cost of public university tuition.

Obama in January 2012 laid out a plan to withhold federal funds from public colleges that do not keep tuition costs in check. Despite his efforts, the average tuition cost at public colleges rose by a record 8.3 percent in 2012.

As for private schools, those costs have jumped even higher, making the best schools accessible not to the best students, but to the best-funded students.

In fact tuition has becoming so onerous that it is worrisome, even to the upper-middle class, as The Wall Street Journal reported in their series "The Price of Admission."

Is this a recipe for future success in America?

Or, if you're not of a philosophical bent, consider this: students who cannot afford college, will earn less money, pay less taxes and be more likely to end up requiring public assistance, or in jail -- both of which are more expensive then subsidizing college costs.

Is this really what we want for the next generation?

Can't we at least agree that the more of our children who go to college, the better off they and the nation will be 20 years from now?

Another Congressional deadline for resolving the loan rate issue looms in August.

But given that Congress failed to meet both the deadline that was to prevent the sequester from happening, and the July 1 student loan deadline, my hopes for agreement are not high -- especially not when it requires that Congress work during the summer, the time they are usually engaged in their primary jobs: raising campaign cash.

And if they can't solve the sideshow, let's see a show of hands for how many can solve the larger issue of how much college costs...

There's Something in the Air

Two things that happened in the cyberspace that is connected to The Mercury got me thinking yesterday.

(Yes, I know EVERYTHING is connected on the Internet, but I'm referring to the things directly connected.)

The first is that people commented on yesterday's blog post in this here Digital Notebook, which many of you know lives in The Mercury's Town Square blogging community.


And both comments observed that one reason Congress can never agree on anything is because of how much money is contributed to their campaigns by special interest groups.

The second thing that happened was I was admiring the Pinterest board the freight train we call police reporter Brandie Kessler has populated for the region's "Most Wanted" and how effective it has become and helping people help police to catch those who need to be caught.

How do these things come together? Why in my Mercury e-mail in-box of course.

Because that's where a press release from the Natural Resources Defense Council Action Fund landed.

They are affiliated with the same folks who went to court to insist, gasp, that the long-term storage of spent nuclear fuel at the Limerick nuclear generating station just might have a long-term environmental impact.

But I digress.

What brought all these things together is that the folks at NRDC took a look at information gathered by Open Secrets and matched it up with the voting records of members of Congress, specifically how they voted on environmental issues.

And what they come up with uses the same mechanism as the Pinterest board and highlights how money affects politics. It's kismet I tell you!

And amid 193 House members and 39 Senators rated as "Dirty Air Villains" are a few local faces.

Before we get to that, the NRDC analysis came across some interesting trends. It found that House members who took more than $100,000 in career "polluter campaign contributions voted against clean air laws nearly twice as many times as those who accepted less than $100,000 from dirty industries."

"In the Senate, members taking more than $500,000 in career career polluter campaign contributions voted against clean air laws three times as often as those taking less, on average," NRDC proclaimed.

And of the 292 NRDC identifies as "Dirty Air Villains," 73 of them represent people living in cities and towns rated by the American Lung Association to be among the 25 most-polluted metro areas in the United States for air pollution.

Charles Dent

(I wrote about our ranking -- 10th -- in this post back in April; and last month I wrote in this blog post about how Pennsylvania ranks third for breathing air pollution specifically from coal-fire power plants; and on Sept. 2, I wrote about a recent court decision that torpedoed the EPA's attempt to get a handle on that power plant pollution.)

So enough background, on to the "villains:"

Joseph Pitts

1. Coming in as the region's number one for volume is U.S. Rep. Charles Dent, R-14th Dist., who has received $423,009 in career campaign contributions from industries the NRDC has declared "dirty" and has also cast what the group calls 13 "dirty votes," against a number of pieces of legislation listed.

(In fact, the analysis is based on 13 "major clean air vlotes in the House and four in the Senate. Members who voted against all 13 are designated "Dirty Air Villains" by the group. All four of the area Congressmen listed on the list cast the same 13 votes.)

Michael Fitzpatrick

2. The second rank, in terms of contributions accepted, belongs to U.S. Rep Joe Pitts, R-16th Dist., who has accepted $243,498 in career campaign contributions.

Patrick Meehan

3. Michael Fitzpatrick, R-8th Dist., holds the number three spot, coming in at $144,542 in contributions from polluting industries. His district is essentially all of Bucks County and a tiny little part of Montgomery County that includes Willow Grove.

4. Last but not least is Patrick Meehan, R-7th Dist., who has to date collected $109,900 on campaign contributions from polluting industries. His district includes Royersford, parts of Upper Providence, Audubon and Eagleville.

In addition to the rankings I provided, NRDC reports that the greater Philadelphia area, which includes all but Dent's district, also rank 16th worse for ozone pollution and 10th worst for year-round particulate pollution.

Allyson Schwartz

Also making the list of "villains is U.S. Sen. Patrick Toomey.

Pennsylvania's four (yes only four) "Clean Air Heroes," according to this ranking, include Allyson Schwartz, D-13th Dist., Chaka Fattah, D-2nd Dist., Robert Brady, D-1st Dist. and Mike Doyle, D-14th Dist.

All 193 "Dirty Air Villains" in the House are Republican. In the Senate, 37 Republicans and two Democrats "voted down the line against clean air. All 99 "Clean Air heroes" in the House are Democrats, while in the Senate, 41 of the "heroes" are democrats and two are Independent, according to NRDC Action Fund.

Constitutionally Speaking

So what did you do for Constitution Day?

Me? I served on jury duty. (I'd like to pretend I arranged it that way for the purposes of riding a high horse for this blog post, but I must give credit for the coincidence to whatever or whoever oversees such things.)

Nevertheless, being a journalist I was pretty much guaranteed not to be picked as a juror and once I told the judge that I had indeed investigated civil claims as part of my job, it was pretty much a foregone conclusion that I would not be a juror in a civil case about a car crash -- another circumstance about which I have written so many articles that it no doubt disqualified me from being considered impartial.

Two-hundred and twenty five years (and one day) ago, 39 men signed what would become the framework of the world's longest lasting Republic.(We won't count the democratic monarchies for our purposes here today.)

National Constitution Day does not work up the kind of patriotic fervor that say Independence Day or Veteran's Day does. Maybe that's because there is no war involved and instead of being about fighting, it's about agreeing.

Constitution Day should recognize one thing that sadly has become positively un-American -- compromise.

When did meeting in the middle become anathema to America?

The "Fiscal Cliff" looms and Congress is going on vacation.

On the way home from jury duty, I was listening to an NPR report about the "fiscal cliff," the next financial crisis we may all face because rather than compromise and reach a budget deal over the debt ceiling last year, members of Congress kicked the can down the road and set a new deadline by which they would do their jobs.

Missing the deadline means we "fall off the fiscal cliff." I am loathe to explain the particulars here due to the likelihood of error contained in the explanation, but rest assured that anything that involves falling off a cliff is rarely good news.

Despite this grave danger to the economy both sides say they want to save, they're going to put off this important work, apparently, because they want to keep their jobs rather than do them, Congress is headed home to ask for your vote and have pushed off the tough decisions until after the November election.

Remember, they just came off a five-week break in August during which they got in touch with their constituents by cutting ribbons and sending you mass mailings and me press releases about what a good job they're doing.

They've got their work cut out for them. Approval ratings are hovering around 13 percent.

This will leave the the matter of whether the nation goes fiscal cliff-diving up to a lame-duck Congress which will either be bitterly licking its wounds or patting itself on the back, causing the word "mandate" to fall out of their mouth at every turn.

It's the "art" of compromise...get it?

Neither seems like fertile ground for compromise.

That leaves the current Congress four months to reach one fiscal agreement for what is likely to be one year. Let's remember that that's how long it took to reach agreement on the entire Constitution!

While the debates 225 years ago were no less spirited, and certainly the issues were just as important that September in Philadelphia, one characteristic existed within those men that allowed them to make this country, something whose absence now may break this country -- a willingness to compromise.

In American politics, "compromise" it is now a synonym for "weakness."

At the founding of our country, however, it was our strength.

Alexander Hamilton arrived in Philadelphia with visions of a president for life and a unicameral legislature.

James Madison arrived hoping to curb the un-checked idiocy of state legislatures left to their own devices (a problem with which we ruefully remain cursed).

George Washington arrived hoping to maintain his stature as the first among prominent Americans.

Most of the others who arrived, thought they would be tinkering around the edges of the Articles of Confederation, as they had tried to do months before in Annapolis.

Everyone got some of what they wanted, but not everything.

Instead, what emerged was a new framework of government that continues to operate, however clumsily, to this day.

It remains a wonder but, like all things older than the present, it could not predict all things to come.

The three branches of government we all learned about in school.

It could not predict abortions or automatic weapons; super highways or super-PACs; global warming or the global economy.

And so it has remained, what we call, perhaps with a dab of hope, "a living document," something that can adapt to the changing times.

And we have never stopped trying.

At only 4,543 words, the original, un-amended Constitution is one of the world's shorter guiding documents.

But members of Congress have, in their wisdom over the ensuing years, proposed more than 11,000 amendments to make it better, everything from banning flag burning, to banning gay marriage.

It is perhaps a testament to what the framers could foresee -- the callowness of politicians -- that they made the process of amending the Constitution so onerous, that only 27 of those proposals have become amendments.

It speaks, perhaps, to one of the primary reasons the Constitution was necessary; because the founders' belief that elevated men could be counted upon to put their own interests aside for the good of the greater polity turned out to be a little pie in the sky.

The painfully divergent paths that state legislatures undertook under the leadership of less than scrupulous men, soon threatened to tear the country apart.

There was no single currency, no single entity to negotiate treaties, tariffs or taxes and a sense of every state for itself.

And so the founders gave way to the framers. The foundation for freedom had been built on high-flying philosophy, due largely to the rhetorical skill and extensive reading habits of one Thomas Jefferson.

But Jefferson and Adams, the two who could most take credit for the Declaration's tone and contents, were both overseas when the Constitutional Convention convened.

Although no less brilliant, the men who crafted the Constitution had, I think, the harder job.

It's is easier to rally people against something, in the first case English colonyhood, particularly to fight against oppression; than it is to get them to rally for something, particularly something that is destined to contain elements they don't like.

Winning wars is for heroes. Cleaning up afterward and trying to have everyone get along fairly is a job for grown-ups.

Soaring phrases about freedom are good for starting and winning wars, but they won't run a country. A system had to be set up, practical matters had to be worked out and the experiment that Enlightenment thinking had been working decades to undertake was finally at hand.

It was a typically muddle American event, with some crucial questions, like slavery, put off until later. And maybe that's where the tradition of kicking the can down the road started.

But the consequences of that failure to find a middle ground came roaring back to us in the form of the Civil War.

We're 225 now. Perhaps its time we acted our age, started learning from history and started to listen to each other enough to find common ground and move the country forward.

One of the original drafts of the Constitution is on
display today at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

Otherwise, we may be the generation which oversees the failure of that ongoing experiment.

(If you have the day off today, you can see six rare original drafts and copies of the Constitution at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania at 1300 Locust St. in Center City from 11:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 18. Admission is free.)

(Also Click here for a link to the U.S. Constitution Center just down the road in Philadelphia to learn more about our Constitution. Maybe I'll see you there.)

Judging by the Jobs

I had an unusual experience on Facebook Friday.

I posted something with which both Republicans and Democrats with whom I associate on Facebook all agreed.

This is what we all agreed upon.

Of course, it's easy to agree on a sign. Now, try to agree on how that performance would be measured.

The debate would surely be hotter than the debate over teacher evaluation methods.

It turns out I'm not the only person to have this thought.

The same day I write this, Carl Gibson posted an article with a similar theme in Reader Supported News.

He says if students and teachers will be measured by standardized tests, so too should elected officials.

Gibson wrote:

According to the standardized test we just drafted, all members of Congress would immediately be ineligible for re-election, as they have held as low as a 9% approval rating in the last year, and job growth has slowed to a trickle largely due to Congress's failure to act on job creation bills, like the American Jobs Act in fall of 2011. And seeing as our Pentagon budget has surpassed $700 billion, which greatly surpasses the money spent by Uncle Sam on environmental protection, education and job training, Congress gets a big fat F in the spending category. 

No doubt the members of Congress would have their own very distinct ideas about how their performance should be measured.

It is with these thoughts in mind that I opened up my e-mail Friday to find two press releases regarding local members of Congress, one from each party, that give some indication of the kind of measures they would most likely prefer be used.

JIM GERLACH

 The National Federation of Independent Business, the nation’s leading small business association, today named U.S. Rep. Jim Gerlach (R-6th Dist.) a Guardian of Small Business for his outstanding voting record on behalf of America’s small-business owners in the 112^th Congress.

Jim Gerlach

NFIB President and CEO Dan Danner praised Rep. Gerlach for “standing for small business.” In presenting the group’s coveted Guardian of Small Business Award, Danner said, “Small-business owners pay close attention to how their lawmakers vote on the issues affecting their businesses and employees and stand by those who stand for them.”

“In the 112^th Congress, Rep. Gerlach proved that he is willing to stand up and do big things for small business,” said Danner. “Guardian-award winners are genuine small-business champions, consistently voting to promote and protect the right of small-business owners to own, operate and grow their businesses."

In all, NFIB will present Guardian awards to 245 Representatives who voted favorably on key small business issues at least 70 percent of the time during the 112^th Congress.

ALLYSON SCHWARTZ

 U.S. Rep. Allyson Schwartz, D-13th Dist, received the Claude Pepper Award this week from the Alliance for Aging Research at their 19th Annual Bipartisan Congressional Awards Gala.

The Claude Pepper Award is presented to a Democratic congressional leader for their leadership in health care policy on behalf of seniors. The Alliance for Aging Research is a national citizen advocacy organization working to improve the lives of Americans as they grow older by advancing biomedical and behavioral research in aging and health.

“Rep. Schwartz is one of the prime movers in Congress for bipartisan solutions for better healthcare for older Americans.  She provided our audience with a powerful vision of what we might learn from scientific research and delivery to advance healthier aging for the American people,” said Dan Perry, President and CEO of the Alliance for Aging Research.

Excerpt from Rep. Schwartz’s acceptance speech as prepared for delivery:

“Moving America forward means never going backward on America's great promise of health care for our seniors.

Allyson Schwartz gets her award

“I hope that together, we will fight for policies to ensure the health and economic security of our nation’s seniors – now and into the future.

“I commend the Alliance for Aging Research for their leadership on important health care issues and their willingness to take on tough challenges.”

Schwartz has been a champion for seniors in America and has dedicated much of her professional career to improving our health care system for all Americans. 

As a senior member of the House Budget Committee, she has fought back against efforts to end guaranteed benefits for our seniors, and instead has worked to strengthen and protect Medicare and Social Security for current and future seniors. 

One of her signature pieces of legislation is a bipartisan plan to protect seniors’ access to their doctors by repealing and replacing the flawed Medicare physician payment system that has caused uncertainty and instability for patients, providers, and the federal budget for a decade.

Through the Affordable Care Act, Schwartz successfully worked to expand benefits, increase access to primary care providers, reduce prescription drug costs, and provide free preventive care services to seniors.

The Pennsylvania Congresswoman has also been a vocal advocate for the National Institutes of Health, which plays a significant role in promoting and advancing better health for all Americans. Schwartz is committed to harnessing the power of America’s world class scientific community, cutting-edge technologies, and innovative spirit in order to promote our nation’s health.

So what do you think?

Does this sort of stuff equal job creation?

In a perfect world, it should be more specific, and perhaps tied to legislation they write, sponsor or vote on.

But let's face it, I also think, given their previous history, that the likelihood that any members of Congress will agree to live by or be judged by any kind of standard they happily apply to others is about equal to the chance of me being named Pope any time soon.