Army veteran and Astoria resident Robert Song attended President Obama’s State of the Union Address on Tuesday as a guest of Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney (D-Manhattan and Queens).
Song, a 2003 graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, helped patrol the borders of Afghanistan and Pakistan from 2004 to 2008. From 2008 to 2010 he served in the 69th Infantry Battalion of the New York National Guard.
A former intern in Maloney’s New York and Washington offices, Song began medical school at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in 2010.
“Robert exemplifies the courage, patriotism and professionalism of all our men and women in uniform,” Maloney said.

See the Queens Courier Article and Photo Here

More than 1,600 underprivileged children have been “granted” the opportunity to pursue their dreams.

Local elected officials and community leaders gathered on January 13 to announce that a $500,000 Promise Neighborhood planning grant from the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) had been procured for the children of the Astoria Houses.

The grant, which was secured by Zone 126, an organization aiming to increase the number of low-income children in Long Island City and Astoria who complete high school, will be used to create “cradle to career” educational support for the young residents of the housing development and the surrounding community. The funding – presented to only 20 organizations nationwide – is being combined with a $350,000 contribution by the Elmezzi Foundation, which created Zone 126, and $400,000 in private donations.

The Promise Neighborhoods program, which was launched by President Barack Obama in 2010, aims to address the difficulties faced by students in impoverished communities by providing a wide range of services, including improving an area’s health safety, and stability, expanding access to learning technology and Internet connectivity and boosting family engagement in student learning.

“I’m absolutely thrilled because of the possibility of giving so much aid and support to 1,600 of our young people here in western Queens,” said Congressmember Carolyn Maloney, who strongly campaigned for the grant. “It will help bring the American Dream to so many young people. [This program] is very comprehensive. It is about screening their eyes and hearing; giving them the tools they need, whether it be computers or learning aids to help them compete; providing support from their families and their community in after school program and tutoring; helping them plan and finance their college education; and helping them move forward to become leaders in our great country.”

Click here to read the full Queens Courier story

Among her colleagues, Representative Carolyn B. Maloney is known as a fiery liberal from Manhattan, a rebel and a bit of a showman (she once appeared on the House floor in a burqa to draw attention to the mistreatment of women in Afghanistan).

Slightly more than six years ago, Ms. Maloney, a Democrat from the Upper East Side, bought for $1.5 million a newly constructed town house in Southeast Washington near the Capitol and across the street from a small park.

Ever since, Ms. Maloney has been renting out rooms in the three-story, red-brick house to her colleagues on the Hill, where there is frequently a need for affordable living space among lawmakers, who must split their time between Washington and their districts.

Ms. Maloney did not set out to be a landlady. For years after first arriving in Congress in 1993, Ms. Maloney did what many other lawmakers in Washington do: she found herself a small one-bedroom apartment to live in during the week while Congress was in session.

But eventually Ms. Maloney — who was accustomed to a buzz of activity in her home in Manhattan, with a husband, two daughters and a cat — grew weary of coming back to an empty apartment in Washington after long and relentlessly busy days on Capitol Hill.

“It was very, very lonely,” Ms. Maloney said. (Her husband, Clifton Maloney, an investment banker and an experienced mountain climber, died at 71 in 2009 while descending from a peak in the Himalayas.)

Now, Ms. Maloney has one of the best-known residences on Capitol Hill, a kind of sorority house of four Democratic women who are given to caucusing late at night over bowls of popcorn about challenges at home and at work.

“I have a friend who used to write for ‘Sex and the City,’ and she wanted to interview us for a sitcom or something,” Ms. Maloney recalled with amusement. “But that is not us and it was not the image that we want to portray.”

Comparable living arrangements for legislators include a notoriously run-down house on D Street that has for decades served as a kind of dormitory for a parade of congressmen and senators.

Its current residents include two of the most ambitious members of the Senate, Charles E. Schumer of New York and Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, who are both said to be quietly positioning themselves to replace the Democratic majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada.

Ms. Maloney’s neo-Victorian home, where a room runs tenants about $1,100 a month, is nothing like the D Street house.

It is a neat house with plantation shutters, hardwood floors, Oriental rugs and framed pictures, including a 1972 Life magazine cover of Bella Abzug, the pioneering congresswoman, under the headline “Women in Politics. How Are They Doing? Where Are They Going?”

Ms. Maloney lives in the master suite on the top floor, where there is an office down the hall from her bedroom.

The second floor — which has two bedrooms with their own bathrooms, as well as a shared laundry room — is occupied by Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, who is chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, and Representative Terri A. Sewell of Alabama, a Democrat who was first elected last year.

A basement apartment is rented by Representative Frederica S. Wilson of Florida, another freshman Democrat.

Ms. Maloney is not a traditional landlord. She does not advertise. (When she began looking for tenants a few years back, she simply went to an orientation held for spouses of newly elected members and announced that she had rooms available for rent.) Nor does she ask for personal references, run credit checks or require security deposits.

Mostly, Ms. Maloney is interested in gauging whether a person will fit in with the group living in the house. She has never rented to a man or a Republican, but says she is open to it if the right candidate came along.

“I wouldn’t want to discriminate against men,” she said. “And I would try to be open to a Republican. But right now, Congress is so partisan.”

For the women who live there, the house is more than just a place to stay. Ms. Sewell recalled many occasions when her housemates would simply talk with her as she figured out, say, what Congressional staff members she should hire.

“The camaraderie in the house is very special,” Ms. Sewell said. “We find that bonding over popcorn is especially helpful.”

Representative Kathy Hochul, a Democrat from the Buffalo area who was a guest there briefly, also recalled how the women in the house helped ease her transition into Congress with advice on matters like what committees she should try to get on.

“It was a fascinating place,” said Ms. Hochul, who slept on a bed in Ms. Maloney’s office on the third floor after starting in Congress last year before eventually finding her own place.

Ms. Hochul disagreed with her former landlady in one respect: “I always felt that we could make a reality show: ‘The Real Congresswomen of D.C.’ It would be a real snapshot.”

Go to the New York Times Article

Rep. Carolyn Maloney hopes to spur job growth with legislation aimed at increasing loans to small businesses.

Maloney will introduce the “micro biz” bill to Congress Monday in an effort to help small banks and other financial institutions make more loans of up to $25,000 to startup businesses.

“The great recession has made it harder than ever for entrepreneurs to get credit,” Maloney (D-Manhattan, Queens) said Saturday at a press conference announcing the bill. “It’s my hope that this ‘micro biz’ bill will be a bridge to a brighter economic future.”

The bill would establish a federally-funded loan-loss reserve, which would act as insurance to lenders in case borrowers default.

The reserve would cost the federal government $30 million a year for the next five years — and allow about 1,000 lenders to make approximately $125 million in loans to small businesses.

See the full Daily News Article

Democrats aren’t taking House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s takedown of Rep. Spencer Bachus lightly.

Following a POLITICO report earlier Thursday that Cantor forced Bachus, the House Financial Services Committee chair, to reverse course on legislation that would crack down on congressional insider trading, the bill’s top backers lashed out at Cantor’s decision to pressure Bachus to back down.

“I was completely surprised and taken aback to find that the Republican leadership had yanked it off the agenda and stopped the process from going forward,” Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) said. “This is something that 99 percent of the Americans agree [with] completely.”

On Tuesday, Bachus called for a Dec. 14 markup on the STOCK Act, which would explicitly bar insider trading among members of Congress and federal workers. The bill, which stands for “Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge,” languished in obscurity before a “60 Minutes” investigation in November propelled it onto committee agendas and to more than 200 co-sponsors.

Read the full Politico article

Queens-Manhattan Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney drummed up support at City Hall on Wednesday for new legislation that focuses on human trafficking.
If passed, the bill would require businesses to identify any form of abuse, trafficking, slavery or child labor practices within their supply lines and report them to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

"Investors will act...with their dollars and reward those companies that are doing the right thing," said Maloney.

According to Maloney, an estimated 12.3 million people are working in some form of forced labor worldwide.

Watch the full video: Maloney Pushes For New Human Trafficking Control Bill

On July 1, the 45th anniversary of the beginning of the Medicare program, Congressmember Carolyn Maloney (D-Queens/Manhattan) spoke to seniors at the HANAC Senior Center in Astoria about her efforts to fight plans put forward by the Republican House majority to end Medicare as we know it. On April 15, House Republicans passed a budget by a vote of 235 to 193 that would end Medicare as we know it – instead giving seniors an increasingly inadequate subsidy to buy private insurance.

“Medicare has transformed the lives of millions of seniors for the better over the last 45 years, and, with Social Security, helped ease the fear and insecurity that all too often used to accompany Americans’ retirement years. Indeed, before Medicare, only about half of seniors had health insurance – and now health insurance coverage is nearly universal among American seniors. So on this important anniversary, I want to let seniors know what I and my colleagues in the New York Congressional delegation are doing to preserve Medicare and fight attempts in Congress to end the program as we know it. Simply put, we will never let that happen,” Maloney said.

“The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office [CBO] states that under the GOP plan, seniors ‘would bear a much larger share of their healthcare costs than they would under the traditional program’. According to the CBO, the GOP plan would more than double the typical senior’s out-of-pocket healthcare spending in 2022, compared to what their costs would be under traditional Medicare – increasing out-of-pocket costs here in New York by more than $6,500 per senior each year.

“Medicare is just too important to mess around with for political purposes. The bottom line is that Congress needs to focus on what’s really important to most Americans – creating jobs and getting our economy back on track, not ending Medicare as we know it. That’s what I’m focused on.”

Read the full article: Maloney Speaks To Seniors On Efforts To Save Medicare

Carolyn says, "The program has been very successful at helping young people stay in school, improve their reading scores, and graduate from elementary and high school."

Watch the entire story: Federal Grant Boosts Underserved Public Schools

Thousands of them that fell ill from the toxic fumes emanating from Ground Zero will now continue to receive critical medical care, thanks to the passing of the Zadroga Act in January. Starting last Fri., July 1, money from the $1.5 billion pot of federal funding guaranteed by the bill was sent to the World Trade Center Centers of Excellence — cause for a ribbon-cutting ceremony held at the Mount Sinai Medical Center in Upper Manhattan that day.

The law provides long-term government financing for health research, data collection and medical treatment for tens of thousands of recovery workers, residents and others suffering from asthma, lung disease and mental health problems related to time spent at Ground Zero. Thus far, Mount Sinai alone has monitored and treated more than 20,000 first responders, while the other regional health clinics have provided care to some 16,000 firefighters and 5,400 area workers, residents and other survivors.

Until the law’s passage, funding was granted to the health clinics on an annual basis.

While the law won’t immediately alter the monitoring and treatment of patients, “the steady funding and infrastructure under the Zadroga Act will improve service for 9/11 responders and survivors, help hire more doctors and staff, conduct research on 9/11 health conditions, offer expanded service outside the New York area and allow patients to appeal decisions about health coverage, among many other changes,” said U.S. Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney, who helped secure the bill’s passage.

Read the full article: Ribbon cutting symbolizes 9/11 survivors’ resilience

The Harold Interlocking has been targeted for overhaul because it has been a traditional bottleneck [on all three lines that use Harold Interlocking - the Long Island Rail Road, NJ Transit and Amtrak].

New tracks built there would allow Amtrak to bypass the already crowded junction and help the rail line shave minutes off its trips to and from Boston, officials said. The LIRR will also cut down on delays since it won't be sharing the tracks with Amtrak.

To cover the $368 million price tag, New York State got a $295 million grant, with the MTA footing the rest of the bill.

Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-Queens/Manhattan) said the country desperately needs high-speed transit, not just for the travel benefits but for the over 9,200 jobs the project is expected to create.

"We've got to really invest in our transit system to make sure New York City remains a world-class destination for business," Maloney said.

Read the full article: Federal government funds to help unsnarl MTA's Sunnyside rail hub