As we wrap up the old year, we have no shortage of challenges ahead in the new one.  Topping the list is the economy, which provides us with our hardest problems and our greatest opportunities for positive change.
 
My goals for the 19th District, and for the nation, are to create jobs and prevent home foreclosures, to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure and where possible incorporate green technologies, to continue improving the care of our returning veterans, and work toward a more cooperative foreign policy based on building up our diplomatic strengths.
 
These things are all related.  Experts tell us that renewable energy creates three to five times as many jobs as would be created by the same dollars invested in traditional power sources.  Several solar panel manufacturers are exploring the Hudson Valley as a site for new manufacturing plants.  City Halls, schools, big box stores, post offices and homeowners are asking about solar or geothermal energy, which are available now and could be funded in part by President-elect Obama's recovery plan.
 
Also fitting within the outline of that plan is traditional infrastructure, like the roads, bridges, and rail lines we use every day to get to work or school.  Thirteen bridges in the 19th District are on the deficient list compiled by the federal government after the Minnesota bridge collapse last year.  Fixing them will make us safer and create jobs that cannot be outsourced.
 
The new Secretary of the Veterans Administration (VA), General Shinseki, is a principled leader who himself wears two Purple Hearts, someone capable of taking on the well-meaning but problematic bureaucracy at the VA.  As Chairman of the House Subcommittee on Disability Assistance and Memorial Affairs, I look forward to working with him and his staff to oversee the changes Congress passed last year in the veterans' claims process, the implementation of education benefits under the new GI Bill, and a broad, generous program to help veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder.
 
All of these goals will be much more achievable if we stop spending $10 billion per month in Iraq and start using that money to fix problems here at home.  Our military has done everything we have asked of them, and their families have borne a heavy burden.  Although Afghanistan still needs more attention, we should wind down our presence in Iraq and try a surge of diplomacy to defuse the tensions between India and Pakistan.  Our traditional and new allies all have a stake in stability in the Middle East and the subcontinent, and should commit resources to help us attain that. One emerging example of such multinational cooperation is the fleet of different navies helping to fight piracy off the Somali coast.
 
Here at home, many families will be facing a different threat: job losses, rising health care costs, shrinking investments, declining property values and increasing taxes.  We should vow a new vigilance against the greed that let billions of dollars be pocketed by individuals while regulators looked the other way.  We need relief for homeowners faced with foreclosure due to predatory lending and for all taxpayers struggling with high taxes at a time of shrinking incomes.  We need to decide if we want certain key industries to remain in our country, like steel, aircraft and automobile manufacturing, and take steps to preserve them.  And we must not forget the oil prices of last summer and be lulled into another decade or more of dependence on foreign sources of energy.  We, the country who put a man on the moon, should lead the way into a clean, renewable, home-grown energy revolution.  Our prosperity, sovereignty, and national security depend on it.

I look forward to working with President-elect Obama, the new Congress, and you, to achieve these goals in the coming years.