Fighting for Your Priorities!

Dear Friend:

As always, I appreciate the opportunity to bring you this update on what was another productive week in Washington. It’s an honor working on your behalf—

As your representative, it is important for me to listen to you so that I can understand your priorities. The input I receive from you, whether through meetings, calls, writings or social media, helps me to better represent you in Washington, DC. This week, based on your invaluable input, I focused my efforts on several items of importance in the 6th Congressional District.

Rep. Coffman calling constituents between votes on 3/21/2018

On Wednesday, my office received notification that House Resolution 128, the ‘Supporting Respect for Human Rights and Encouraging Inclusive governance in Ethiopia’, will receive a vote on the House floor in April. This is good news and it comes after months of hard work, including a local delegation traveling to Washington to assist in negotiating the resolution’s terms with House leadership. The 6th Congressional district is home to one of the largest Ethiopian communities in the U.S. and this resolution is very important to our Ethiopian-American neighbors. Although this resolution is a focus for Ethiopian-Americans, I also should note that this issue is of importance to all of us as it takes a strong stand against oppressive regimes and for human rights and the rule of law.

On the same day, I participated in a House Armed Services Committee hearing titled ‘State and Non-State Actor Influence Operations: Recommendations for U.S. National Security’. As I noted last week, the U.S. government faces continued challenges from state and non-state actors that ultimately threatens our national security. At the hearing, I questioned General Phillip M. Breedlove, U.S. Army (Ret), who recently led the U.S. European Command, Mr. John Garnaut, a former senior advisor to Australian Prime Minister Malcom Turnbull, and the Honorable Michael D. Lumpkin, a former assistant Secretary of State. (Video Above). The key point, not surprisingly, is that the U.S. government needs to do more to ensure increased transparency regarding the misinformation and ‘news,’ often produced by Russia, China or their proxies. I have already begun the process to do so by introducing the ‘Honest Ads Act.’ This bicameral and bipartisan legislation, once enacted, will ensure the American public has full disclosure as to who is behind paid political/news advertisements on social media. I look forward to hearing your thoughts and ideas on other ways to address this important issue and look forward discussing them further with my colleagues.

Finally, I am happy to report that after nearly 4 years of hard work and bipartisan negotiations, my bill, H.R. 918, the ‘Veteran Urgent Access to Mental HealthCare Act’ was included in the ‘omnibus’ and has become law as of Friday. H.R. 918 is another example of legislation I championed that came from listening to constituents, Iraq and Afghanistan combat veterans, here in Colorado. My legislation will provide combat veterans who received “Other-than-Honorable” (OTH) discharges from the military, an opportunity to receive mental health care from the Department of Veterans Affairs. Previously, veterans with OTH discharges were not eligible for VA mental health care even if they had multiple combat deployments. My legislation lets our combat veterans, whose mental health conditions are related to the stress they experienced in combat, know that they are not alone. As a Marine Corps combat veteran, I try to live by the rule that we never leave anyone behind.

I encourage you to follow me on Facebook and Twitter to keep up to date as I continue to work on your behalf in our nation’s capital.