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Washington, DC – Today, U.S. Congresswoman Gwen Moore (D-Milwaukee) made the following statement after FEMA amended Milwaukee ‘s disaster declaration following last summer’s flood to include individual assistance:

“When he was here on Labor Day, I spoke to President Obama about how our community is struggling to recover from the flooding and how much we need help.

BARABOO — U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore held a thermos and figuratively poured what she called lies — proposed tax cuts, efforts to repeal health care reform, the “need to take back our country” — into a glass of “poison tea” decorated with a skull.

“Don’t drink the tea, people,” the Democrat from Milwaukee told the crowd Saturday at the ninth annual Fighting Bob Fest. “Remember the Kool-Aid (from the Jonestown massacre in 1978)? This tea is just as lethal.”

Moore’s speech echoed the sentiments of many who came to the Sauk County Fairgrounds for a gathering of progressives. The event also served as a rally against the tea party movement that gained momentum this year around the country.

Wisconsin will receive almost $7 million in federal funds for efforts to reduce the neighborhood impact of foreclosed homes, officials said Wednesday.

Nearly $2.7 million of the award is targeted for Milwaukee. The money is intended to help state and local governments acquire, redevelop or demolish foreclosed properties, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

The money headed to Milwaukee is part of an additional $1 billion in HUD funding nationwide to help deal with the foreclosure crisis. The Neighborhood Stabilization Program money was included in the recently enacted financial system reform legislation, said U.S. Rep Gwen Moore, a Milwaukee Democrat.

Karen Hickey, Wisconsin AFL-CIO political field communications assistant, sends us this report.

Rep. Gwen Moore (D-Wis.) joined more than 150 union members at a recent labor walk in Milwaukee to thank volunteers for their hard work this election. We went door to door to talk with union members in support of Wisconsin State AFL-CIO endorsed candidates Sen. Russ Feingold (D) and gubernatorial candidate Tom Barrett (D).

Says Penny Amos-Sikora, Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Local 998 legislative director:

Using stimulus money to save hundreds of Milwaukee families from homelessness, Congresswoman Gwen Moore will speak today about how federal funding helped 836 families find a place to live.  Moore  helped secure funding from the stimulus act that was used by community advocates to help decrease the number of evictions.

Republicans don’t like that Obama ‘bought his daughter ice cream,’ one ally said Monday. Wisconsin Rep. Gwen Moore warmed up a Democratic crowd for President Obama on Monday by accusing Republicans of criticizing Obama for personal reasons. After rattling off the GOP’s opposition to the health care law, unemployment insurance and jobs legislation, Moore said

Much of the e-mail I receive in response to my columns accuses me of being a conservative. Now, that’s a good thing if the e-mail is from a conservative but a bad thing if the e-mail is from a liberal.

I do not subscribe to several major planks of either of the platforms. The proper faction to belong to if you are running for office is usually the one that is currently in vogue.
Occasionally, however, you see a politician who speaks and votes his or her mind. Once again, my friend Rep. Gwen Moore (D-Wis.) has surprised me.

Moore is a dyed-in-the-wool liberal. If you knew her life history and let her explain how the government was her only safety net for feeding and housing her family when she was a young woman and how she worked her way out of poverty, you would realize that there is another side to the story of just monetizing every social program our legislators propose.

To quote the Journal Sentinel: The paper “was right – and it was wrong” in its Sept. 3 editorial about my position on the proposed Kenosha-Racine-Milwaukee commuter rail line. I support the KRM. In fact, I worked to secure authorization for this project in 2005 when Congress last considered legislation that lays out nationwide transportation priorities for five years. And now that it is 2010 and time to consider this legislation again, I once more have identified this project as a priority for funding.

Connecting our cities is crucial for us to be competitive in the 21st-century economy. Allowing easier travel and commuting throughout southeastern Wisconsin will indeed bring benefits to our region.

The Journal Sentinel seems to think that we should immediately move full steam ahead on KRM on the hope that one day our buses will have sustainable funding. In a perfect world,

I would agree. Unfortunately, we all know that this world is far from perfect.

Service members would have more flexibility to share Post-9/11 GI Bill benefits with their children under a House bill introduced on Wednesday.
The bill, HR 5737, would remove a restriction that benefits must be transferred before the child is age 23. It would not change a restriction under which children may use transferred benefits only until age 26.

Rep. Gwen Moore, D-Wis., is the bill’s sponsor.

In a statement, Moore said she could find “no valid policy reason” for requiring benefits to be transferred by age 23. The effect of the policy has been to prevent people from sharing a few years or months of benefits with a child who is between the age of 23 and 26, she said.

When President Obama told workers Monday at ZBB Energy Corp. that he’s “fighting on all fronts” to get the economy back on track, he could have been talking about his party’s dicey political fortunes as well.

“The worst mistake we could make is to go back to doing what we were doing that got us into the mess that we were in,” Obama said, referring to the economic meltdown of 2008. “We can’t turn back.”

Making stops at the high-tech energy firm in Menomonee Falls and later at an election fund-raiser in downtown Milwaukee, Obama said Republicans were counting on voter “amnesia” – that people will forget who was in charge when the economy unraveled.

The president’s visit here was part of his biggest campaign fund-raising trip this year – aimed in large part at helping his party win or keep governorships in three states vital to his re-elections prospects in 2012: Wisconsin, Ohio and Florida. The area visit was the first stop on a five-state, three-day swing to California, Washington state, Ohio and Florida.