The recession has severely strained police departments throughout New Jersey.  Many have had to take cops off the beat; Trenton today has the same number of police on the rolls as it did in 1932, with troubling, dangerous effects.

For decades, the federal government has played a role in supporting police in our communities.  Through the Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) program, it has provided $18 million to 34 communities throughout central New Jersey, putting at least 330 police officers and sheriff’s deputies on the street.

Yet the Majority in Congress, intent on scaling back federal programs, proposed eliminating the COPS program last year.  Although that effort ultimately failed, they are trying again to reduce the COPS program in 2013 Justice Department appropriations bill.

On Tuesday evening, I joined a bipartisan coalition of members to say, “Not so fast.”  Together with Republican Reps. Michael Grimm and Peter King, as well as Democratic Reps. Pedro Pierluisi and Bill Pascrell, Jr., I sponsored an amendment to increase support for the COPS program by $94 million next year.  Our amendment was adopted by the full House, and the underlying bill passed on Thursday and now moves to the other side of the Capitol for Senate consideration.

Think of the great moments of American public policy:  the creation of land grant colleges, the G.I. Bill, providing student loans – all directed toward increasing access to higher education. 

In Congress, one of my top priorities has been to continue the work of making college more affordable and accessible.  In 2007, I helped write the law that lowered interest rates on federal subsidized Stafford loans to 3.4 percent, saving today’s typical student borrower a couple thousand dollars.

Yet if Congress fails to act now, interest rates will double to 6.8 percent on July 1, 2012.  This would apply to any student taking out a new loan after July 1, whether to start college or to stay in school.

We have 57 days left to prevent this – 57 days to prevent students from facing higher costs when they start classes next year, 57 days to prevent 143,892 New Jersey students from paying an additional $115 million in borrowing costs over the next year alone.

Next week, the U.S. Senate will be voting on the Stop the Rate Hike Act of 2012, of which I am a cosponsor in the House.  The bill would keep loan rates at 3.4 percent, and it would pay for the cost by reining in just a fraction of the taxpayer subsidies to Big Oil.

Among recent college graduates who have taken out student loans, the average borrower owes $25,000 in education debt.  Meanwhile, the five biggest oil companies reported $33.5 billion in profits in the last three months alone.  Who needs our support more:  the student, or Big Oil?

Too many research discoveries and technologies never make it from the laboratory to the marketplace or the patient’s bedside.  Researchers speak of a “Valley of Death” between basic R&D in laboratories and the creation of marketable technologies and medical treatments.

Earlier this week, I introduced legislation with Sen. Frank Lautenberg to help to bridge this gap.  The America Innovates Act would create an American Innovation Bank to help universities and other research institutions establish and grow “proof of concept” funds to invest in science and technology-based projects in their earliest stages.  The legislation also would provide high-tech innovators with business development training so they can turn their ideas into marketable products.

Bridging this gap between laboratories and the marketplace will help to save American lives, create jobs, and ensure America’s continuing role as a leader in innovation.

Dear Friend,

Today marks the two-year anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon disaster.  On April 20, 2010, the oil rig exploded, killing 11 workers.  The platform soon collapsed beneath the water’s surface, but over the course of the following 87 days, more than four million barrels of oil spewed from the blown-out Macondo well, coating nearly 1,000 miles of Gulf coastline and temporarily closing more than 88,000 square miles of some of the nation’s most productive fishing grounds. 

The Deepwater Horizon tragedy was a wake-up call, but some of my colleagues seem to have missed the sound of the alarm.  In the two years since the disaster, I have offered bills to implement the safety recommendations of the National Commission on the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill.  I also have introduced the Big Oil Bailout Prevention Act to make sure that oil companies pay the full cost of damages resulting from future oil spills.  Unfortunately, the Republican majority has refused to allow these much-needed reforms to be considered by the House of Representatives.

We owe the families of those killed two years ago a serious examination of the lessons learned in order to ensure that the ongoing drilling in the Gulf is as safe as possible.  We owe the families and workers who depend on the coastal resources of New Jersey and elsewhere a promise that a similar accident will never take place off of their shores.

Did you know that, in 2011, the federal government spent seven times more on national defense than on all of our education programs – from Early Head Start through job training services – combined?

You probably have a good sense of what the federal government does:  protecting national security, investing in education, supporting seniors through Social Security and Medicare, advancing medical research, and much more.  But how many of your tax dollars support each activity?

You have a right to know what your tax dollars fund and, under our representative government, an opportunity to have a say on that spending.

Some people would have us believe that America could balance its budget solely by cutting back on programs such as foreign aid.  Yet America’s international development and humanitarian programs – which help many people and do a tremendous amount to burnish our nation’s reputation around the globe – make up only 0.8 percent of your income tax bill.  Education and job training programs are larger but still consume only 3.6 percent.  National defense, on the other hand, consumes about 25 percent.

Want to learn more?  Visit the White House’s 2011 Federal Taxpayer Receipt.

The federal budget is a moral document.  It reflects, in dollars and cents, our national priorities.

The annual budget resolution, although not really binding, lays out the plan for spending and taxation.  For the second year in a row, the majority’s budget focuses solely on cutting government programs – ultimately reducing these programs to their lowest level in half a century.  It fails to raise revenue to shrink the deficit, but provides even greater tax cuts for the wealthy.  It passed last week with no Democratic votes and the support of all but 10 Republicans.

At a time when the government should be supporting middle-class families, fostering job creation, and promoting education, research, and innovation that will help grow our economy over the long term, the budget resolution passed by the House fails to meet these goals and moves us in the wrong direction. 

You can learn more about this budget’s deep flaws in a series of brief videos that I recently shared via YouTube.

Health reform turned two years old last week, and I’ve heard from many in New Jersey who have been personally and positively affected by the new law.

A mother from Kendall Park wrote to say that her 24-year-old son could not afford health insurance – until health reform enabled him to join her insurance plan.  A retiree from Monroe Township says that he was struggling to afford his prescription drugs after falling into the Medicare “donut hole,” but health reform is helping him stay afloat.  A small business owner in Middletown says that she is depending upon health reform’s new tax credits to help her continue to provide insurance coverage to her employees.  And a man from Eatontown says that, because he broke his back several years ago, no insurer will cover him – but beginning in 2014, health reform will guarantee that he is always insurable despite this pre-existing condition.

In my office in West Windsor last Friday, officials from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services joined me in hosting a swearing-in ceremony for five women who had traveled a long pathway from tragedy to citizenship.

When Waqar Hasan came to the United States in 1993, he did so in search of a better life for his family.  His wife, Durreshahwar, and four daughters, Nida, Asna, Anum, and Iqra, followed a year later, and the family settled in Milltown.

They epitomized the hardworking, optimistic spirit that immigrants have always brought to this country.  And they were on their path to citizenship when Waqar Hasan lost his life for no other reason than he was a Muslim with a “Middle Eastern” face.

An angry young man walked into Waqar’s convenience store in Dallas, Texas on the night of September 15, 2001, four days after the 9/11 attacks, ordered two hamburgers, and then shot the 46-year-old father of four in the face with a .380 caliber handgun.  Nothing was taken from the store.  When asked by police why he shot Waqar, 32-year-old Mark Anthony Stroman expressed no remorse.  “I did what every American wanted to do but didn’t.”

His death would have ended his family’s path to citizenship – but in 2004, Congress passed and President Bush signed a bill that I wrote to allow the Hasans to stay in the United States and to become American citizens.

Last week, the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, on which I serve, considered a reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), currently known as No Child Left Behind.  

While I agree with the basic principles of ESEA – that schools should be accountable for demonstrating that students are learning and that any definition of success must include all students and not just the best – I believe that the law needs reforming.  I am working to improve teacher training, to increase funding for science and foreign language education, and to strengthen collection of student data so that we can see how well individual students are learning.

Education reform has always been bipartisan in the past.  Since the first ESEA in 1965, Democrats and Republicans have worked together to close the skills gap and eliminate inequality in education, not just provide additional funds for schools to use as they please.

Unfortunately, the Committee considered two partisan bills that would move away from the crying need to close the gap between good schools and the many underperforming schools that are condemning millions of children to diminished opportunities in life. These flawed bills would let states and local school districts reduce education funding and even shift funds away from the schools with the most need.  Particularly glaring, they ignored science education all together.

I voted for a comprehensive alternative that would address the concerns raised by parents, students, teachers, principals, and other school officials.  You can watch a video of my remarks here.

This week's eGenda comes to you from Montgomery, Alabama, where I am participating again in the annual Congressional Civil Rights Pilgrimage.  The Pilgrimage, sponsored by the Faith and Politics Institute, is led by Rep. John Lewis, includes Rep. Steny Hoyer and 15 or so Members of Congress from both parties and a number of figures from the civil rights movement, and has two days of seminars at key sites in Birmingham, Montgomery, and Selma from the movement of the 1950s and '60s -- from the Rev. Dr. King's church, to the Rosa Parks bus stop, to Kelly Ingram Park, to the Edmund Pettus Bridge.  It provides a valuable reminder of how this country has gotten to where we are and of what we can be.

Long before John Lewis was a member of Congress, he was a central figure in the struggle for equality and civil rights -- at the lunch counter sit-ins, on the Greyhound bus Freedom Rides, at the "I Have a Dream" March on Washington, in the lobbying effort for the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and in the voting rights march in Selma.  Displaying enormous non-violent courage, he was threatened, beaten, scorned, and jailed again and again.  Ultimately he was vindicated and revered as the embodiment of hope and accomplishment that is the very character of America.

America was born in compromise and contradiction.  The country that was conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all are created equal lived with a deliberate blindness to slavery for scores of years and for even longer has turned a deaf ear to the cries for justice and equality of opportunity in our society.  Long after slavery was abolished legally, we have shown a great willingness to tolerate a society that, amid wealth, allows many people to live in the disgrace of shabby housing, to live with the risks of inadequate healthcare, and to carry the debilitating curse of  inferior education, as well as to bear the daily indignities of unequal justice.  To use a religious metaphor, it is America's original sin.  Some tolerate this glaring contradiction in America between our ideals and our reality; others try to justify it with strained arguments that people of privilege deserve their relative good fortune simply because they come from privilege, and those of misfortune somehow get what they deserve, as well.  Some might call it hypocrisy that we have lived with such a contradiction for so long, but I prefer to think of it as a long wrestling match between our human shortcomings and our better angels.  I think it is our constitutional government that has brought about and officiated that wrestling match in a manner that results in progress.

Recently, there has been a lot of discussion about a new rule guaranteeing that health insurers provide free access to contraception, as well as confusion about how this rule affects people of faith.  So what is the debate about?

It starts with a provision in the health reform law that certain preventive services should be offered to an insured employee without a co-pay or deductible.  This provision makes sense.  Many people do not get needed preventive services because they cannot afford them, and the result is often less than optimal health.

The Institute of Medicine, which was charged with making recommendations about what should be considered good, standard, preventive care, determined that contraception should be covered.  This makes sense also.  Decades of evidence show that contraception coverage reduces health care costs, improves health, and decreases maternal and infant mortality.  Planned births result in improved health of mothers and infants.  Denying coverage for such standard health care would require women to pay out-of-pocket for their basic preventive care. 

On Saturday, February 25, I'll host a community town hall in the Council Chambers of the West Windsor Municipal Complex. I hope you will join us to share your thoughts, ideas, and concerns about the issues that matter most to you.

1:00 p.m., Saturday, February 25th
Town Hall with U.S. Representative Rush Holt

West Windsor Municipal Complex, Council Chambers
271 Clarksville Road, West Windsor, NJ

(Milltown, NJ) – U.S. Rep. Rush Holt (NJ-12) and Milltown Mayor Eric Steeber today announced that the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) has formally committed to maintaining a postal retail facility in Milltown.

“For more than eight months, Milltown has lived without a functioning post office,” said Holt.  “Many residents have written me to express concern about the disruption to their personal and business lives.  They have faced longer drives to buy stamps, send a certified letter, or conduct the day-to-day work of their small businesses.  Fortunately, we can now say that these disruptions will soon end:  I have received a formal, written commitment from the U.S. Postal Service to maintain a postal retail facility here in Milltown for the long term.”

The Milltown Post Office has been closed ever since it was damaged in flooding from Hurricane Irene last year.  A temporary trailer was installed to provide P.O. Box services, but all retail operations were transferred to the East Brunswick Post Office.

FUNDS WILL SUPPORT TUTORING AND COUNSELING FOR 425 LOW-INCOME OR AT-RISK TRENTON STUDENTS

(West Windsor, NJ) – U.S. Rep. Rush Holt today announced that Mercer County Community College has received a $394,260 federal grant for its Upward Bound program, which provides tutoring, counseling, and other academic support to at-risk and low-income high school students in Trenton.

“As an educator, I’ve seen firsthand the power of higher education to change lives,” said Holt.  “But for too many low-income families in our community, a college education seems out of reach.  This grant will help to build a path to college for more than 400 Trenton students, transforming their lives and strengthening our region’s economy.”

“Upward Bound has a proven track record of academic success with Trenton students,” said Patricia C. Donohue, Ph.D., the president of Mercer County Community College.  “This award will allow us to assist another 425 through high school, into college, and beyond.  Nearly 100 percent of Upward Bound graduates go to college, and most graduate on time.”

(Washington, D.C.) – U.S. Rep. Rush Holt (NJ-12) today introduced to the U.S. House of the Representatives a resolution condemning the New York Police Department’s ethnic and religious profiling and warrantless surveillance of Muslim Americans.  The resolution was cosponsored by Reps. Judy Chu (CA-32), Keith Ellison (MN-05), Michael Honda (CA-15), Jesse Jackson, Jr. (IL-02), and Jan Schakowsky (IL-09).

“Casting suspicion on people on the basis of their race, religion, or ethnicity without any legally valid reasons is not the way we behave in America,” said Rep. Holt.  “Profiling in policing is a substitute for thinking.”

As first revealed in extensive reporting by the Associated Press, the NYPD has conducted wide-scale warrantless surveillance of Muslims throughout the country, including at mosques and businesses in New Jersey, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania.  In many instances, the surveillance occurred in absence of any suspicion of wrongdoing – that is, organizations and individuals were surveilled solely on account of their religious affiliation.

(Washington, D.C.) – Later today, the U.S. House of Representatives is expected to pass the Fiscal Year 2013 Commerce, Justice, and Science Appropriations Bill, which includes $94 million in increased funding for the Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) program secured by U.S. Rep. Rush Holt (NJ-12) and a bipartisan group of representatives.

After House passage, the bill will be sent to the U.S. Senate for further consideration.

“This is an important first step toward putting more police back on the streets of Trenton and other New Jersey communities,” said Rep. Holt. “We still need the Senate to act, and ideally to provide even more funds.  The need is dire and immediate.”

ARTWORK BY WEST WINDSOR-PLAINSBORO HIGH SCHOOL SOUTH STUDENT WILL BE DISPLAYED IN U.S. CAPITOL

(Washington, D.C.) – U.S. Rep. Rush Holt (NJ-12) today announced that “Rush Hour,” a drawing by Loretta Liu of West Windsor-Plainsboro High School South, has won the 2012 Congressional Art Competition for the 12th District of New Jersey.  Liu’s artwork will be displayed in the U.S. Capitol building alongside work by other high school artists from across the country, and she will be invited to join Rep. Holt in Washington, D.C. for a ribbon-cutting ceremony later this year.

The overall runner-up, “Clothesline,” a painting by Juliette Chen of East Brunswick High School, will be displayed in Rep. Holt’s New Jersey office.

Rep. Holt said, "I congratulate Loretta and all of the winners in this year's Congressional Art Competition.  Their work demonstrates great creativity, talent, and originality, and I am honored to showcase their efforts."

Mr. Chair, I rise in opposition to the TRAIN Act. This misguided legislation would undermine the Environmental Protection Agency's ability to enforce the Clean Air Act and significantly limit the federal government's ability to ensure that the air we breathe is safe and pollution-free.

Mr. Speaker, nearly two-thirds of Americans say that job creation should be Washington's top priority. But no one here needs an opinion poll to learn that. I am sure all my colleagues are hearing what I hear by mail, fax, e-mail, Twitter, phone calls, Facebook, and passersby on the street. Everyone is saying, ``Congress, get on with it! Make jobs! Get America to work! Get my husband, my cousin, my daughter to work.'' And, yet again, the Republican majority in the House is playing political games--wasting time debating a senseless resolution when we could, and should, be doing the work that the American people sent us here to do: creating jobs and revitalizing our economy.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the outsourcers' bill of rights.

This bill would be devastating to workers across this country and kick off a new race to the bottom. The outsourcers' bill of rights is a naked attempt to directly interfere in a pending Labor Relations Board case. Now, there is much to be said about workers' rights and the importance of protecting them; but in the short time I have, let me just say a little bit about what this means for the American economy.

Mr. Chair, I rise today in support of the Empowering Parents through Quality Charter Schools Act, H.R. 2218, which is a bipartisan bill to reform and strengthen the charter school program.

I recently gave the graduation speech at the Princeton Charter School, a high quality charter that opened its doors more than a decade ago and was recognized as a blue ribbon school by the U.S. Department of Education in 2004. And I was pleased to see the success there. But I urged them to make sure they are well-integrated in the public school system in their community.

Madam Chair, I rise in reluctant support of this bill.

This bill is, by the conventional standards of the House, an appropriate vehicle for meeting many of the routine needs of the Intelligence Community. However, it completely fails to undertake the kind of probing, large-scale reassessment of the structure, mission, and purpose of our intelligence enterprise in a post-bin Laden era. I regret that Congress has not shown the stomach for the kind of thorough, comprehensive, and brave review of intelligence activities that was undertaken by the Church Committee in the 1970's. Given the events of the last decade, such a review is both long overdue and very badly needed. Despite my strong reservations about what this bill does not but should do, I will support this bill.

The recession has severely strained police departments throughout New Jersey.  Many have had to take cops off the beat; Trenton today has the same number of police on the rolls as it did in 1932, with troubling, dangerous effects.

For decades, the federal government has played a role in supporting police in our communities.  Through the Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) program, it has provided $18 million to 34 communities throughout central New Jersey, putting at least 330 police officers and sheriff’s deputies on the street.

Yet the Majority in Congress, intent on scaling back federal programs, proposed eliminating the COPS program last year.  Although that effort ultimately failed, they are trying again to reduce the COPS program in 2013 Justice Department appropriations bill.

On Tuesday evening, I joined a bipartisan coalition of members to say, “Not so fast.”  Together with Republican Reps. Michael Grimm and Peter King, as well as Democratic Reps. Pedro Pierluisi and Bill Pascrell, Jr., I sponsored an amendment to increase support for the COPS program by $94 million next year.  Our amendment was adopted by the full House, and the underlying bill passed on Thursday and now moves to the other side of the Capitol for Senate consideration.

Think of the great moments of American public policy:  the creation of land grant colleges, the G.I. Bill, providing student loans – all directed toward increasing access to higher education. 

In Congress, one of my top priorities has been to continue the work of making college more affordable and accessible.  In 2007, I helped write the law that lowered interest rates on federal subsidized Stafford loans to 3.4 percent, saving today’s typical student borrower a couple thousand dollars.

Yet if Congress fails to act now, interest rates will double to 6.8 percent on July 1, 2012.  This would apply to any student taking out a new loan after July 1, whether to start college or to stay in school.

We have 57 days left to prevent this – 57 days to prevent students from facing higher costs when they start classes next year, 57 days to prevent 143,892 New Jersey students from paying an additional $115 million in borrowing costs over the next year alone.

Next week, the U.S. Senate will be voting on the Stop the Rate Hike Act of 2012, of which I am a cosponsor in the House.  The bill would keep loan rates at 3.4 percent, and it would pay for the cost by reining in just a fraction of the taxpayer subsidies to Big Oil.

Among recent college graduates who have taken out student loans, the average borrower owes $25,000 in education debt.  Meanwhile, the five biggest oil companies reported $33.5 billion in profits in the last three months alone.  Who needs our support more:  the student, or Big Oil?

Too many research discoveries and technologies never make it from the laboratory to the marketplace or the patient’s bedside.  Researchers speak of a “Valley of Death” between basic R&D in laboratories and the creation of marketable technologies and medical treatments.

Earlier this week, I introduced legislation with Sen. Frank Lautenberg to help to bridge this gap.  The America Innovates Act would create an American Innovation Bank to help universities and other research institutions establish and grow “proof of concept” funds to invest in science and technology-based projects in their earliest stages.  The legislation also would provide high-tech innovators with business development training so they can turn their ideas into marketable products.

Bridging this gap between laboratories and the marketplace will help to save American lives, create jobs, and ensure America’s continuing role as a leader in innovation.

Dear Friend,

Today marks the two-year anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon disaster.  On April 20, 2010, the oil rig exploded, killing 11 workers.  The platform soon collapsed beneath the water’s surface, but over the course of the following 87 days, more than four million barrels of oil spewed from the blown-out Macondo well, coating nearly 1,000 miles of Gulf coastline and temporarily closing more than 88,000 square miles of some of the nation’s most productive fishing grounds. 

The Deepwater Horizon tragedy was a wake-up call, but some of my colleagues seem to have missed the sound of the alarm.  In the two years since the disaster, I have offered bills to implement the safety recommendations of the National Commission on the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill.  I also have introduced the Big Oil Bailout Prevention Act to make sure that oil companies pay the full cost of damages resulting from future oil spills.  Unfortunately, the Republican majority has refused to allow these much-needed reforms to be considered by the House of Representatives.

We owe the families of those killed two years ago a serious examination of the lessons learned in order to ensure that the ongoing drilling in the Gulf is as safe as possible.  We owe the families and workers who depend on the coastal resources of New Jersey and elsewhere a promise that a similar accident will never take place off of their shores.

Did you know that, in 2011, the federal government spent seven times more on national defense than on all of our education programs – from Early Head Start through job training services – combined?

You probably have a good sense of what the federal government does:  protecting national security, investing in education, supporting seniors through Social Security and Medicare, advancing medical research, and much more.  But how many of your tax dollars support each activity?

You have a right to know what your tax dollars fund and, under our representative government, an opportunity to have a say on that spending.

Some people would have us believe that America could balance its budget solely by cutting back on programs such as foreign aid.  Yet America’s international development and humanitarian programs – which help many people and do a tremendous amount to burnish our nation’s reputation around the globe – make up only 0.8 percent of your income tax bill.  Education and job training programs are larger but still consume only 3.6 percent.  National defense, on the other hand, consumes about 25 percent.

Want to learn more?  Visit the White House’s 2011 Federal Taxpayer Receipt.

The federal budget is a moral document.  It reflects, in dollars and cents, our national priorities.

The annual budget resolution, although not really binding, lays out the plan for spending and taxation.  For the second year in a row, the majority’s budget focuses solely on cutting government programs – ultimately reducing these programs to their lowest level in half a century.  It fails to raise revenue to shrink the deficit, but provides even greater tax cuts for the wealthy.  It passed last week with no Democratic votes and the support of all but 10 Republicans.

At a time when the government should be supporting middle-class families, fostering job creation, and promoting education, research, and innovation that will help grow our economy over the long term, the budget resolution passed by the House fails to meet these goals and moves us in the wrong direction. 

You can learn more about this budget’s deep flaws in a series of brief videos that I recently shared via YouTube.

Health reform turned two years old last week, and I’ve heard from many in New Jersey who have been personally and positively affected by the new law.

A mother from Kendall Park wrote to say that her 24-year-old son could not afford health insurance – until health reform enabled him to join her insurance plan.  A retiree from Monroe Township says that he was struggling to afford his prescription drugs after falling into the Medicare “donut hole,” but health reform is helping him stay afloat.  A small business owner in Middletown says that she is depending upon health reform’s new tax credits to help her continue to provide insurance coverage to her employees.  And a man from Eatontown says that, because he broke his back several years ago, no insurer will cover him – but beginning in 2014, health reform will guarantee that he is always insurable despite this pre-existing condition.

In my office in West Windsor last Friday, officials from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services joined me in hosting a swearing-in ceremony for five women who had traveled a long pathway from tragedy to citizenship.

When Waqar Hasan came to the United States in 1993, he did so in search of a better life for his family.  His wife, Durreshahwar, and four daughters, Nida, Asna, Anum, and Iqra, followed a year later, and the family settled in Milltown.

They epitomized the hardworking, optimistic spirit that immigrants have always brought to this country.  And they were on their path to citizenship when Waqar Hasan lost his life for no other reason than he was a Muslim with a “Middle Eastern” face.

An angry young man walked into Waqar’s convenience store in Dallas, Texas on the night of September 15, 2001, four days after the 9/11 attacks, ordered two hamburgers, and then shot the 46-year-old father of four in the face with a .380 caliber handgun.  Nothing was taken from the store.  When asked by police why he shot Waqar, 32-year-old Mark Anthony Stroman expressed no remorse.  “I did what every American wanted to do but didn’t.”

His death would have ended his family’s path to citizenship – but in 2004, Congress passed and President Bush signed a bill that I wrote to allow the Hasans to stay in the United States and to become American citizens.

Last week, the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, on which I serve, considered a reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), currently known as No Child Left Behind.  

While I agree with the basic principles of ESEA – that schools should be accountable for demonstrating that students are learning and that any definition of success must include all students and not just the best – I believe that the law needs reforming.  I am working to improve teacher training, to increase funding for science and foreign language education, and to strengthen collection of student data so that we can see how well individual students are learning.

Education reform has always been bipartisan in the past.  Since the first ESEA in 1965, Democrats and Republicans have worked together to close the skills gap and eliminate inequality in education, not just provide additional funds for schools to use as they please.

Unfortunately, the Committee considered two partisan bills that would move away from the crying need to close the gap between good schools and the many underperforming schools that are condemning millions of children to diminished opportunities in life. These flawed bills would let states and local school districts reduce education funding and even shift funds away from the schools with the most need.  Particularly glaring, they ignored science education all together.

I voted for a comprehensive alternative that would address the concerns raised by parents, students, teachers, principals, and other school officials.  You can watch a video of my remarks here.

This week's eGenda comes to you from Montgomery, Alabama, where I am participating again in the annual Congressional Civil Rights Pilgrimage.  The Pilgrimage, sponsored by the Faith and Politics Institute, is led by Rep. John Lewis, includes Rep. Steny Hoyer and 15 or so Members of Congress from both parties and a number of figures from the civil rights movement, and has two days of seminars at key sites in Birmingham, Montgomery, and Selma from the movement of the 1950s and '60s -- from the Rev. Dr. King's church, to the Rosa Parks bus stop, to Kelly Ingram Park, to the Edmund Pettus Bridge.  It provides a valuable reminder of how this country has gotten to where we are and of what we can be.

Long before John Lewis was a member of Congress, he was a central figure in the struggle for equality and civil rights -- at the lunch counter sit-ins, on the Greyhound bus Freedom Rides, at the "I Have a Dream" March on Washington, in the lobbying effort for the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and in the voting rights march in Selma.  Displaying enormous non-violent courage, he was threatened, beaten, scorned, and jailed again and again.  Ultimately he was vindicated and revered as the embodiment of hope and accomplishment that is the very character of America.

America was born in compromise and contradiction.  The country that was conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all are created equal lived with a deliberate blindness to slavery for scores of years and for even longer has turned a deaf ear to the cries for justice and equality of opportunity in our society.  Long after slavery was abolished legally, we have shown a great willingness to tolerate a society that, amid wealth, allows many people to live in the disgrace of shabby housing, to live with the risks of inadequate healthcare, and to carry the debilitating curse of  inferior education, as well as to bear the daily indignities of unequal justice.  To use a religious metaphor, it is America's original sin.  Some tolerate this glaring contradiction in America between our ideals and our reality; others try to justify it with strained arguments that people of privilege deserve their relative good fortune simply because they come from privilege, and those of misfortune somehow get what they deserve, as well.  Some might call it hypocrisy that we have lived with such a contradiction for so long, but I prefer to think of it as a long wrestling match between our human shortcomings and our better angels.  I think it is our constitutional government that has brought about and officiated that wrestling match in a manner that results in progress.