In the News

"No American should go bankrupt paying for the prescription drugs they need to survive."

In the last ten years, Big Pharma has spent over $3.7 billion lobbying Congress. To put that in perspective, that is a whopping $1 billion more than any other industry. In Washington, pharmaceutical lobbyists outnumber members of the House of Representatives 3 to 1.

As a result, Big Pharma has year after year been able to stop progress on a number of pieces of legislation that would crack down on price gouging and prevent drug companies from making excessive profit on life-saving, commonly prescribed medicine, at the expense of Colorado families and seniors.

Jason Crow knows firsthand the bond that develops between U.S. soldiers and allies.

"These are people that we get very close to, that we're living with, and fighting alongside, sometimes for many years," says the Democrat, who prior to becoming the representative for Colorado's 6th Congressional District served in the Army in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Today, October 30, Crow and Republican congressman Michael Waltz from Florida introduced the Syrian Partner Protection Act, which would establish a special immigrant visa for Syrian Kurds who have helped the U.S. fight the Islamic State, or ISIS.

In 2005, when now-Congressman Jason Crow left Afghanistan after serving two tours as an Army Ranger, he couldn't imagine a scenario that would take him back there.

He was 26 years old and months away from marrying his fiancé, Deserai. He remembers interviewing the minister, who would end up marrying them, over a satellite phone from a bunker. He'd soon attend law school, become an attorney, have two kids, and, more than a decade later, be elected to Congress. It's a life a long way from the Pakistan border where Crow and other special operations soldiers would go on daily missions for Osama Bin Laden and top al-Qaeda and Taliban commanders.

The Aurora immigration detention center is lacking top medical staff, according to a handful of Colorado congressional Democrats who toured the facility on Monday.

Crow, who announced earlier this month he or his staff would be touring the center weekly for oversight purposes, was joined by Colorado Democratic congress members Diana DeGette, Joe Neguse and Ed Perlmutter.

"Many of the senior positions in the health unit, including the top two positions, are currently vacant, as well as psychologists," Crow said in a news conference following the tour. "And these vacancies, we believe, are causing some of these delays in adequate medical attention."

In the past few years alone, the U.S. has launched military strikes in Syria, Somalia, Yemen, and Iraq—all in the name of fighting al-Qaeda and its later offshoot, the Islamic State. For the most part, Congress has accepted this. But as Trump-administration officials talk ever tougher about Iran, many Capitol Hill Democrats, and some Republicans, fear that the confrontation could spin out of control into a devastating conflict. And now they're trying to claw back some of the power that the president—whom they view as dangerous and reckless—has to declare war. Administration officials such as Mike Pompeo have made the rounds to argue for the connection between Iran and al-Qaeda.

The House passed legislation by voice vote on Monday intended to increase cybersecurity at the Small Business Administration (SBA) and separately approved a bill to help small businesses defend against cyber attacks.