Tom Perriello: Focus on job creation

My top priority as your representative has been finding ways to encourage job growth and economic recovery in Central and Southern Virginia. We have made smart, strategic investments in infrastructure and workforce that position our area to be leaders in alternative energy production, advanced manufacturing, and other industries of tomorrow. But while we are working hard to create opportunity, we must make sure there is a safety net for our friends and neighbors who are unable to find work.

Last week, after months of posturing, the Senate finally extended unemployment benefits that millions of Americans badly need. These benefits are a crucial lifeline while we continue to make progress on our job creation efforts. The House also passed two bills last week to help revive the manufacturing sector and create good-paying jobs in our region, in addition to bills we have already passed to create construction jobs and help small businesses. I urge the Senate to pass these jobs bills before Congress goes into recess in August.

While legislative battles dominate headlines, much of my work is helping individual constituents behind the scenes, particularly when seniors, veterans, and the unemployed are fighting for the benefits they worked hard to earn. I take my efforts on behalf of local citizens as seriously as my votes, because the federal bureaucracy can be a daunting opponent. That is why I have staff in four offices across the district—Martinsville, Danville, Farmville, and Charlottesville—who help constituents cut through the red tape and attitude they too often encounter.

I have made constituent casework and correspondence a top priority and thus far have completed work on nearly 1,100 individual constituent cases. These cases include services like securing veterans’ benefits, tracking down military service records or medals, securing Social Security benefits, Medicare/Medicaid issues, expediting passport requests, securing moneys owed by the IRS, and assisting with immigration paperwork such as overseas adoption or reuniting of families.

In my first term in Congress, I have put over $3.6 million back into the pockets of individual Virginians by helping veterans, seniors, and other constituents struggling with federal bureaucracies. This is money that the federal government owed to our neighbors in our communities, and we delivered not just much-needed financial support but also validation and, in some cases, apologies.

The money returned to constituents comes from a variety of federal sources. Thus far, I have helped secure $2.7 million in Social Security benefits for seniors, $844,000 of veterans’ benefits to constituents who served in our armed forces, and nearly $46,000 from the Internal Revenue Service that was either incorrectly withheld or from wrongly assessed penalties that got waived.

These victories are not just about the dollars returned to families, but also about fairness and recognition for those who have spent too many hours being denied what they earned. Behind every number is a story of a constituent who was on the verge of losing their home before receiving long-overdue back pay, or who was owed four months of Social Security payments, or who had been erroneously kicked off the Medicaid rolls due to a calculation error.

If you’re getting the run-around from Medicare, Social Security, the VA or any federal agency, please call or stop by my office. There’s a great team ready to serve you.

In addition to casework, we have responded to over 27,000 constituent letters and pieces of correspondence this year, bringing the total for the last 18 months to 63,304. Finally, more than 600 requests for tours of the White House, Capitol, and other Washington, D.C., attractions have been fulfilled, and nearly 100 requests for U.S. flags flown over the Capitol have processed.
 
 

Tom Perriello represents the Fifth District of Virginia in the United States House of Representatives.

Tom Perriello: A sense of economic urgency

Column by Tom Perriello
www.perriello.house.gov

For 18 months, I have been fighting for Congress to pass simple legislation to support American manufacturing and construction. Washington seems to lack the urgency that I sense back home on Main Street.

One of the common-sense solutions I have pushed for is the Rural Energy Savings Program Act, a bill that we call “Rural Star,” which can put construction crews back to work tomorrow renovating buildings with American-made insulation and super-efficient windows. It is estimated to create 20,000 to 40,000 jobs a year while saving Virginia families and businesses money on their electric bills. I was an original cosponsor of this important bipartisan legislation, along with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), and last week the U.S. House Committee on Agriculture finally passed it on a simple voice vote. This means it is heading to the floor for a vote by the full House of Representatives.

Rural Star is a simple but powerful way to put people back to work in the hard-hit construction sector while also saving families money on electric bills amidst a brutal summer. The bill creates a loan fund through the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Rural Utilities Service (RUS) so local electric cooperatives can offer small, low-interest loans to customers for energy-saving renovations and structural improvements.

These renovations can produce major savings for Virginia families, but sometimes the upfront investment costs too much for some to afford. In this economy, many folks don’t have $7,000 to spend on a new roof, or heating and cooling system, for example. This program allows them to receive a small loan from their electric cooperative, ranging from $1,500 to $7,000, to purchase sealing, insulation, heat pumps, HVAC systems, boilers, roofs and make other improvements that produce significant savings. Consumers then repay the loan with a small fee built into their utility bill, but the genius of this plan is that this would be offset by lower consumption. Consumers are then left with lower electric builds and a high resale value for their homes. Every single dollar loaned out under the program will be repaid within ten years. The program builds on the existing electric co-op infrastructure that has strong community ties and a 75-year history of financing for consumer loans.

In addition to the savings for consumers, the program will also be a boon for the domestic manufacturing and construction industries. Energy-efficiency products are almost exclusively manufactured in the United States—including window films manufactured in Martinsville—and installation jobs cannot be exported. We cannot let this year’s building season pass without putting our crews back to work, and every day we delay just means more money flowing out of our communities.

Common-sense solutions can help turn our job crisis around, but Washington must act before this construction season ends. Rural Star, and the related Home Star proposals boost construction, manufacturing, home values, and family budgets. As far as I’m concerned, this one is a no-brainer. I’m thrilled to see Rural Star moving forward and I am urging my colleagues to pass this much-needed job-creating measure before Congress leaves on August recess.

Rural Star is exactly the kind of common-sense legislation that I have been calling for as part of my “New Energy” Blueprint. This detailed, forward-looking plan has guided my efforts to put Central and Southern at the forefront of the burgeoning clean and alternative energy industry. In the past year, we’ve made significant progress in every of the plan, including energy efficiency, with federal funding from the Recovery Act supporting weatherization of 824 homes in the Fifth District, a 70 percent increase from previous years.