Weekly Newsletter 09.12.2023

Last week was a short but busy final week of recess before we return to Washington today to race towards the end of the fiscal year. Before the current fiscal year ends at 11:59 pm on September 30th, Congress must pass twelve appropriations bills - or a continuing resolution to fund federal government activities for a limited period of time - to avoid a government shutdown. 

Things don’t look good. While the Senate passed all twelve of their versions on a bipartisan basis before the August recess, the House only passed one appropriations bill on a mostly party-line vote because of Republican in-fighting over how many culture war amendments and additional spending cuts to load onto the appropriations bills. To make matters worse, some members of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus - or the Chaos Caucus as I have come to call it - are refusing to vote on a continuing resolution unless it includes their extreme policy agenda and further spending cuts beyond those agreed upon in the Fiscal Responsibility Act (H.R.3746) passed in May. Some of the Chaos Caucus have gone as far as to say a government shutdown is not a bad thing - despite the devastating impacts a shutdown would have. Virginia has the second highest number of federal employees at 144,000, ranks 11th in federal aid per capita, and approximately 1 in every 3 dollars flowing through the state economy can be attributed to the federal government.

Stay tuned this week for real-time updates on the latest Chaos Caucus brinkmanship. In the meantime, here is an overview of what my staff and I were up to in the District last week.

Town Hall Meeting Recaps First Six Months in Office

Last week marked six months since I was sworn-in as your Congresswoman in the Fourth District! I marked the occasion with my first in-person town hall meeting. I enjoyed the opportunity to share my work in Washington and take questions from constituents on the issues that matter to them. You can watch the full video of the town hall meeting here.

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Visiting the Sprout School at Bainbridge to Discuss Pending Childcare Cliff

As one of the few mothers with young children in Congress – and even fewer mothers of color – I know all too well that the cost of quality child care and early childhood education has exploded over the past ten years, and working families feel the pinch. I also know the importance of child care and early childhood education not only in helping parents work, but laying a strong foundation for K-12 learning. 

One of the most popular early childhood education programs in Richmond is the YWCA Richmond’s Sprout School, which provides a full day, high-quality early childhood education from infants to pre-K. With three locations, Sprout School embraces the Reggio Emilia teaching philosophy which encourages discovery, creativity and community. Sprout School offers financial aid, allowing families of all income levels to apply. The program is so popular that its waiting list has over 800 children! 

Last week I visited the Sprout School’s Bainbridge location to learn more about how the looming childcare cliff could impact the Sprout School if Congress does not act to extend childcare stabilization funds from the American Rescue Plan that will expire on September 30th. A recent study from The Century Foundation (TCF) projects that if that happens, approximately 3.2 million children could lose their childcare spots as roughly 70,000 child care programs close, resulting in a loss in tax and business revenue to the states of $10.6 billion in economic activity per year. In Virginia, that translates to over 88,000 children losing childcare spots as nearly 1,400 childcare programs close. Millions of parents across the country would likely either leave the workforce or reduce their hours, costing families an estimated $9 billion each year in lost earnings. The childcare workforce, which has been one of the slowest sectors to recover from the pandemic, could lose another 232,000 jobs.

House and Senate Democrats are fighting to avoid the childcare cliff. Last month, I joined Congresswoman Suzanne Bonamici in a letter calling on the Biden-Harris Administration to support increased funding for the childcare sector to stave off the cliff. Senator Tim Kaine led a similar letter in the Senate. I am also cosponsoring The Child Care for Working Families Act to provide high-quality, affordable childcare and pre-K and increase workforce training and compensation for early childhood educators, and The Build Housing with Care Act to deliver $500 million in grant funding to support the planning and construction of childcare centers co-located with affordable housing.

Meanwhile, House Republicans are proposing $4.8 billion in cuts to childcare programs in this year’s appropriations bills, including $75 million in cuts to childcare resources particularly for low-income college students, and $750 million in cuts to Head Start and Early Head Start funding. Such cuts would have a devastating impact on The Sprout School and other early childhood education centers participating in Head Start.

Richmond-Henrico Youth Gun Violence Prevention Roundtable

Gun violence is the number one cause of death for children in America. We have seen the devastating impact of gun violence here in the Fourth District on families and communities, which is part of a larger issue plaguing the state and nation. More than 1,000 Virginians and 30,000 Americans are killed by gun violence in any given year. This disproportionately impacts communities of color: Black Virginians are 8 times more likely to die from gun-related homicide than white Virginians. Between 2020 and 2021, Virginia saw a 6.4 percent rise in homicides, most of which involved a firearm. Young adults aged 18 to 24 have some of the highest rates of gun-related injuries, accounting for nearly a third of hospital visits in 2021. Richmond leads the state in the number of firearm injuries per 10,000 emergency department visits, with a rate of 16.5, according to the last six years of data.

These statistics are jarring. But these are not just statistics; each number represents a personal tragedy: mothers, fathers, sons and daughters whose lives were cut short due to gun violence. These are the communities where we live, work and send our kids to school. We cannot allow our homes to become places where we fear for our lives.

Last week, I hosted a roundtable discussion with gun violence advocacy organizations, attorneys, law enforcement, public health experts, young adults, and other stakeholders from Henrico County and the City of Richmond to discuss the underlying causes of gun violence in the region and what steps should be taken to address them. What came through the discussion loud and clear is the need to address not only the ease of access to high-capacity weapons, but the need for a comprehensive approach to address the root causes of gun violence in all its forms and research on which intervention strategies are most effective.  

As a state legislator, I worked with Delegate Marcia Price on legislation to create a Center for Firearm Violence Intervention and Prevention to do just that. While the bill was unsuccessful, we were able to create the Virginia Firearm Violence Intervention and Prevention Fund through the state budget to support crime intervention and prevention through community engagement, including youth programs. Now, as a member of the House Gun Violence Prevention Task Force, I am now exploring ways to do this at the federal level. 

You can learn more about the roundtable discussion and the work I’ve done to address gun violence here.

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Rural Healthcare Roundtable

Last week, I joined VCU Health Center, Capital Area Health Network, and local government leaders and health care stakeholders for a rural health roundtable focused on Greenville, Brunswick, and Empora, which rank 104th, 111th, and 132nd out of the 133 Virginia localities for overall health outcomes respectively. We discussed the data in detail and the challenges rural communities face accessing health care, which include socioeconomic status, lack of healthcare coverage, geographic distance to providers, a lack of access to high-speed internet and devices for telehealth services. 

Thanks to the work of Congressman Donald McEachin last year, the CDC Office of Rural Health was established as part of the FY2023 funding bill signed into law by President Biden in December. However, there is much more work to be done, particularly to increase the healthcare workforce in rural communities. To that end, I submitted  programmatic appropriations requests for more funding for community health centers to provide integrated, high-quality primary care, particularly in underserved rural and urban communities across the nation, and for $350 million in funding to support the nursing workforce development in rural and medically underserved communities.

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