Dear Friends,
It is a privilege to send you greetings and to express my
gratitude for your leadership on behalf of the people of Orleans
County during this difficult last year.
I would like to take this opportunity to discuss some of my work
fighting for New Yorkers alongside the Biden administration. In
March, we passed the American Rescue Plan, a critical measure
to deliver desperately-needed assistance to communities across
New York and to lay the foundation to Build Back Better. The
Plan has been an important component in driving economic
recovery across the state, delivering nearly $13 billion for New
York’s state government and another $10 billion to stabilize
local governments and support essential services. That funding
has helped struggling families make ends meet with stimulus
checks and the newly expanded Child Tax Credit payments that
began rolling out last month. It will also help our governments
keep employees on the payroll and keep critical services
running.
While the resources in the American Rescue Plan helped us meet
some of New Yorkers' immediate needs, there is more work to
be done to promote an equitable economic recovery for all New
Yorkers. The pandemic has taken a particular toll on our rural
communities throughout upstate New York. As we work with the
Biden administration to rebuild, I want to reimagine the way that
the federal government and rural communities can work
together. I have introduced and am fighting for the Rebuild
Rural America Act, which would make $50 billion in block
grants available to rural communities for locally-driven projects
and collaborative economic development plans. The bill would
also provide for better access to technical assistance and other
resources through the USDA to make sure that our rural
communities are not left out of the recovery process.
Additionally, another one of my longstanding priorities has
gained the attention and support of the Biden administration. As
a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and as
chair of the Personnel Subcommittee, I have fought since 2013
to reform our military justice system. The Military Justice
Improvement and Increasing Prevention Act (MJIIPA) is a
bipartisan bill that would professionalize how the military
prosecutes serious crimes and would deliver justice for
our service members by moving the decision to prosecute from
the chain of command to independent, trained, professional
military prosecutors. I am proud to announce that this bill now
has the support of a bipartisan filibuster-proof group of 66
cosponsors in the Senate, and I intend to advance a vote on the
bill as part of this year’s defense authorization bill. President
Biden has personally assured me he would “love to sign the bill
into law” when it reaches his desk, and military justice reforms
remain a priority for his Defense Department.
Finally, I will continue to advocate for our state’s rural
communities from my seat on the Senate's Agriculture
Committee. This year, I was honored to be named chair of the
Subcommittee on Livestock, Dairy, Poultry, Local Food
Systems, Food Safety and Security. As we rebuild from the
pandemic, I will continue to serve as a voice for our state’s
farmers in Washington and fight for priorities such as
transparency in dairy pricing and direct relief for farmers.
Sincerely,
Kirsten Gillibrand
United States Senator
