WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, Rules Committee Chairman James P. McGovern (D-MA) sent a letter signed by all 25 Committee Chairs in the United States House of Representatives and addressed to President Joseph R. Biden Jr. urging him to convene a national conference on food, nutrition, hunger, and health. Calling for further action to address a hunger crisis exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, the committee leaders said that nearly 40 million Americans lacked the resources to keep food on the table ...
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WORCESTER, MASS. – Today, U.S. Congressman James P. McGovern (MA-02), Chairman of the House Rules Committee, and Mark Bilotta, CEO of Worcester-based Massachusetts Education and Career Opportunities, Inc. (MassEdCO) announced that the U. S. Department of Education has awarded MassEdCO $11.3 million over the next five years to provide education and career readiness services to some 8,000 low-income, underrepresented students and adults looking to access some type of postsecondary education. More ...
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WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Congressman James P. McGovern (D-MA), Chairman of the House Rules Committee, issued this statement following the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) concluding a congressionally-mandated review of Thrifty Food Plan guidelines: “Even before COVID hit, too many people in my district and across America couldn’t afford the basic human right of access to nutritious food. By carefully reviewing the Thrifty Food Plan as Congress required in our bipartisan 2018 Farm Bill—a...
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WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Congressman James P. McGovern (D-MA), co-chair of the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission and a leading congressional advocate for human rights, today released a letter to Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega urging him in the strongest possible terms to free all political prisoners, ensure that conditions for the upcoming elections in November meet international standards and resume cooperation with international human rights bodies. “Today the moral authority in Nicaragua lies...
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WASHINGTON, D.C. – This week, Congressman James P. McGovern (D-MA), Chairman of the House Rules Committee, sent a letter to United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Secretary Tom Vilsack calling on the Biden Administration to increase Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) Benefits. On March 3, 2021, USDA announced it had begun updating the Thrifty Food Plan—a calculation of the minimum cost of a healthy diet on which SNAP benefits are based. Research shows that while SNAP reduc...
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WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, Congressman James P. McGovern (D-MA), Chairman of the House Rules Committee, announced that his bipartisan amendment providing $2.5 million for a White House Conference on Food, Nutrition, Hunger and Health has been approved by the House of Representatives. “The first, last, and only White House conference on hunger was held the same year we put a man on the moon. That conference developed and strengthened many programs we still rely on like SNAP, WIC, and the national ...
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WORCESTER, MASS. —Today, Congressman James P. McGovern, Chairman of the House Rules Committee and Co-Chair of the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, released the following statement in response to widespread protests in Cuba: “The Cuban government must respect the right of the Cuban people to peacefully and legitimately protest. Yet even though the U.S. has repeatedly stated that we stand with the Cuban people, we have not taken basic steps that could help empower them and relieve their sufferi...
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WASHINGTON, DC — Today, Chairman James P. McGovern (D-MA) and Congressman Guy Reschenthaler (R-PA) led a bipartisan group of Rules Committee Members in a letter addressed to Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III, Secretary of Veterans Affairs Denis McDonough, and Secretary of Agriculture Thomas J. Vilsack urging them to address hunger and food insecurity among military families. The member’s letter follows a recent Rules Committee roundtable examining the hunger crisis among veterans and mili...
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WASHINGTON, D.C. – The United States lost an estimated one-third of its honeybee colonies between 2016 and 2018 and national honey crops have remained at record-low levels. U.S. Reps. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) and Jim McGovern (D-MA) are working to address this disturbing trend that poses major risks to our food supply chain and the environment. Today, during National Pollinator Week, the lawmakers reintroduced the Saving America’s Pollinators Act to protect bees and other vital pollinators. The le...
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WASHINGTON – U.S. Congressman James P. McGovern (D-MA), Chairman of the House Rules Committee and Co-Chair of the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, released the following statement in response to the Biden administration’s vote against a United Nations General Assembly resolution calling for the U.S. to end its decades-long economic embargo on Cuba: “I am incredibly disappointed by this decision. Continuing Trump’s backwards, irrational, and cruel approach to Cuba hurts the U.S. and Cuban peop...
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