Our nation’s veterans have made incredible sacrifices in defense of our freedom, and it is our duty to provide the highest level of care for these brave men and women. Sadly, many of our disabled vets in the Central Valley have struggled to access the services they need. That’s why this week, I introduced the Veterans Accessibility Advisory Committee Act. This commonsense, bipartisan legislation would create a permanent advisory committee within the VA to allow for direct and regular communications with the Secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs on behalf of disabled veterans.

You can read more about my bill here.

Since taking office, President Biden and his administration have continually taken steps to limit American energy production – driving up costs for Central Valley families and making our nation more reliant on foreign nations to meet our energy demand. Recently, the Department of Energy announced that they would not approve any permits for new Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) export facilities – a huge blow to energy prices here at home and for our allies abroad, who rely on American energy exports.

That’s why this week, I voted for the Unlocking our Domestic LNG Potential Act to reverse President Biden’s misguided new mandate. I’ll keep working to expand our energy production and reduce prices for Valley residents.

This week, as we celebrated Valentine's Day, I was proud to join Rep. Ryan Zinke (MT-01) in introducing the Flowers for Fallen Heroes Act. There are more than 20 American military cemeteries around the world that serve as the final resting place for many of our soldiers who lost their lives abroad. Unfortunately, it’s quite difficult for the families of these soldiers to honor their loved ones. The Flowers for Fallen Heroes Act would create a permanent program to make it easier for loved ones to order flowers to the grave sites of our fallen heroes buried abroad.

You can read more about this bill here.

Our question this week comes from Amy in Hanford. He asks: 

“Why did you vote against the bipartisan border deal? The southern border is so chaotic, and we have to do something to stop it – wasn’t that deal better than nothing?”

Thank you for the question, Amy. To be clear – there was never a vote on this border deal in the Senate or the House. There was opposition in the Senate on both sides of the aisle and therefore was never sent over to the House for a vote.

While I don’t think the deal that was put forward was perfect, I believe it was an important start to making some desperately needed changes to our border policy.

I know some people say we don’t need more laws and that President Biden can secure the border himself. President Biden has executive authority to do things like reinstate the “Remain in Mexico” policy, but he doesn’t have the authority to do things like raise the credible fear standard to stop people from abusing our asylum system. Two things can be true at once – Biden needs to do more to secure the border, but we also need to make changes to our existing laws. We shouldn’t want the security of our border to rely on the actions of one individual - especially one who has shown he isn't willing to use his full authority to secure the border. We need to put policies in place so that regardless of who is president, these policies are the law of the land.

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