Beer

On Thursday morning, I visited the D.G. Yuengling & Son brewery in Pottsville to get a tour of the facility and speak with Dick Yuengling Jr. about bipartisan legislation that I am cosponsoring called the Craft Beverage Modernization and Tax Reform Act. This bill will help support local breweries across Pennsylvania and the country, and I look forward to fighting for its passage in the Senate.

Beer is one of the most heavily taxed products that American consumers buy. In fact, around 40 percent of the retail price of beer is taxes. The bill I've cosponsored will reduce the excise tax for brewers, cider producers, and producers of distilled spirits. Small and midsize breweries will see the largest tax reduction, which is great for our Commonwealth because Pennsylvania is a leader in craft beer with over 250 small breweries which employ thousands of workers.

This legislation is good for jobs and will lower prices for consumers. And beer is delicious - especially D.G. Yuengling & Son's Traditional Lager.

The United States and Israel share a unique strategic partnership and friendship. Today, as the Middle East disintegrates into violent chaos, this relationship is more important than ever.

As moral allies, our two countries are joined by an unwavering commitment to democratic ideals. Free speech, open elections, and religious freedoms are values found on the streets of Pittsburgh and Jerusalem alike. Israel's status in the world was born of its urgent necessity - a homeland for an oppressed people built on the most natural of rights: The right to exist, to practice religion freely, to have a voice, to be an equal citizen of the world. If anyone can appreciate this necessity, it is the United States - a country considered relatively new by the yardstick of history, born out of religious persecution and political oppression.

Our mutual commitment to these ideals binds us in history, but it also binds us in the new and dangerous challenges we face on the global stage. The United States and Israel are friends. We are allies. Our mutual hope for security is only possible when we join together in strategic alliances to preserve our values and way of life that we know are worth defending.

You can read more about my commitment to Israel in a column I wrote for the Jewish Policy Center here. The photo above is of me speaking to members of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee from Pennsylvania last year.

I visited Lehigh Valley Health Network last Friday to discuss an urgent legislative effort to help curb the heroin and prescription painkiller epidemic that is raging across Pennsylvania and the country. This bipartisan legislation would reverse an Obamacare provision that doctors, hospitals, and public health groups have warned is contributing to the opioid and heroin epidemic.

Obamacare links a series of questions about pain on a hospital satisfaction survey to nearly $500 million in Medicare reimbursements. Questions include whether hospital staff did "everything they could to help you with your pain," among other similar questions. Hospitals with high scores on the survey get a greater share of Medicare reimbursement as a result. Those facilities with lower satisfaction scores lose money. You can read more about the problem in this Time Magazine article titled "How Obamacare Is Fueling America's Opioid Epidemic."

To eliminate this perverse incentive, I have cosponsored and will work for the enactment of Sen. Ron Johnson's (R-Wis.) bill called the Promoting Responsible Opioid Prescribing (PROP) Act. Our bipartisan bill is aimed at alleviating the pressure on doctors to over prescribe opioids and would simply remove the results of the Obamacare-mandated pain questions for purposes of calculating Medicare reimbursement.

You can learn more about my visit to Lehigh Valley Health Network here.

Every 66 seconds, someone in America is diagnosed with Alzheimer's. Today, more than five million people have Alzheimer's or other forms of dementia, and until we have a research breakthrough, that number is expected to triple to 13.8 million by 2050. That means the number of families and friends making personal sacrifices in order to care for their loved ones will soar as well.

This is a personal issue for me. My father has Alzheimer's, and my grandmother died from the disease. I've met with many caregivers across Pennsylvania - spouses, sons, and daughters of Alzheimer's patients. They are people just like my wife, Kris, and me. They are people who share the worry about the deterioration of loved ones, seemingly worse with every visit.

According to an Alzheimer's Association report, care contributors spend, on average, $5,155 per year of their own money to provide assistance to loved ones. To make ends meet, they are cutting back on basic necessities such as food, transportation, shelter, utilities and health care. 45 percent of spouses or partners and 17 percent of children of Alzheimer's patients risk their own financial future by spending money from their personal savings and retirement accounts.

There is no prevention, treatment, or cure for Alzheimer's; however, we're starting to move in the right direction on medical research. In recent years, Congress passed legislation requiring the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to make an annual professional recommendation on the appropriate level of funding needed to meet the challenge of Alzheimer's disease. This year, Congress enacted a significant increase in funding for Alzheimer's research. I met with Dr. Francis Collins (pictured above), Director of the NIH, last year about this funding issue and I am glad to see results.

Alzheimer's is a tragic illness that robs its victims of one of their life's greatest possessions - their memories. Working together, I am confident we can cure it. You can read more about the impact Alzheimer's has on families in a column I wrote here.

Thursday, May 5^th was Holocaust Remembrance Day. This day was marked with a ceremony at the United States Capitol Visitors Center that honored the lives and legacies of the victims and survivors of the Holocaust. A constituent of mine notified my office that he was attending with his wife's parents - both of whom survived the Holocaust.

Pictured from left to right: Dimple Gupta - one of my policy advisors in my Washington office, Joel Greenberg - proud Pennsylvanian, Joseph Gringlas - survivor of the Holocaust at Auschwitz-Birkenau, Reli Gringlas - another Holocaust survivor at Poprad in Czechoslovakia, and their daughter Marcy Gringlas. You can see more photos from the ceremony here.

Mr. Gringlas lit a candle of remembrance at the ceremony. I was glad my staff was able to meet with them and participate in this solemn and moving event.