Dear Fellow Hoosiers,

Thank you for the opportunity to update you on the work of the 114th Congress.  I trust this finds you and your family well, as we work together to bring Hoosier common sense to Washington.

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In this week's Rokita Report

• Addressing the Indiana State Teachers Association
• Budget Process Reform Hearings
• Rokita Reading - Preserving Voter Integrity

Addressing the Indiana State Teachers Association

On Wednesday, I addressed over 130 members of the Indiana State Teachers Association (ISTA) at their breakout session during the annual National Education Association conference in D.C.

I discussed the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), which I helped co-author.  This bipartisan bill was signed into law in December and it will result in comprehensive education reform, replacing No Child Left Behind and ensuring local community control of education policy.  In an important win for teachers,ESSA restores state and local control of education, stripping the Department of Education of its ability to impose unrealistic and irrelevant standards upon schools.  Furthermore, ESSA allows states to identify struggling schools and intervene, replacing the one-size-fits-all federal identification and intervention strategy.

Rep. Rokita speaking before Hoosier educators.

I know that ESSA will bring joy back to teaching, not only in Indiana, but across the country.  The Indiana State Teachers Association and its members were strong backers of ESSA, and I was able to personally thank them for their support, as their phone calls, petitions, and face-to-face meetings with legislators encouraged the positive reforms and were crucial in getting the bill passed into law.

As the Chairman of the Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education, I will continue to monitor progress in education reform and will work to ensure that this bill is properly implemented.  As part of this Congressional oversight work, Secretary of Education John King recently testified before the full House Education & the Workforce Committee to discuss the implementation progress on this bill.  I look forward to more hearings and discussions to come.

Budget Process Reform Hearings

The Budget Committee has been holding a series of hearings examining how and why the current federal government budgeting process is ineffective and in disarray. The process, originating from the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, is outdated, burdensome, overly complex, and almost impossible to fully understand.

Under the current process, Congress only reviews discretionary spending on an annual basis.  However, discretionary spending only accounts for a third of the entire budget.  Most federal spending actually happens through auto-pilot mandatory spending, which includes entitlement programs like Medicare and Social Security.

The shortcoming of the current budget process jeopardizes Congress’s power of the purse.  As Vice Chairman of the committee, I joined with my colleagues in examining fixes to the Congressional Budget Act and a return to our Constitutionally-limited principles.  An enhanced process would strengthen a strong balance of power between the separate branches of government, so Congress can restore its power of the purse and can improve its oversight of the Executive Branch’s actions. 

Rokita Reading - Voter Integrity 
A clickable offering of books and articles that I've read recently and highly recommend, as we strive together to "Keep the Republic."

This week's Rokita Reading is an article by Robert Popper from the Wall Street Journal on Voter ID laws entitled The Voter Suppression Myth Takes Another Hit.  I was reminded of the article recently in light of recent court rulings that brought voter ID laws back into the spotlight.

In Indiana, as Secretary of State, I helped write our state's landmark voter ID laws and successfully defended our state's laws before the Supreme Court.  Since that important legal victory, our law has been used as a model across the country.

The results are in on voter ID laws.  They work and they make Americans more confident in the electoral system.  In the first election following North Carolina's implementation of the voter ID law, Popper writes that turnout among minorities went up.  Instead of being a tool to suppress voters, voter ID laws empower voters by giving them confidence in the system.  We saw this in Indiana as well with historic turnout following the implementation of voter ID laws.

Thank you for your continued interest in Congress and for supporting my efforts to bring Hoosier common sense to Washington. Take care.  

Sincerely,
 
Todd Rokita