After cosponsoring the Keep Families Together and Enforce the Law Act this afternoon, Congressman Rod Blum released the following statement: "As the mainstream media continues to make this a hyper-partisan issue focused around separating children from their parents, they are failing to acknowledge the fact that 10,000 out of 12,000 of these children under care of HHS were sent to this country without any of their family members-- resulting in a 325% increase in unaccompanied alien children (UAC)...
Read more
"Although he doesn’t want children of illegal immigrants separated from their parents, Iowa 1st District Rep. Rod Blum is calling for congressional Democrats to join efforts to fix the problem. “I never want to see children taken from their parents because their parents broke our laws,” the Dubuque Republican said. However, Blum said both parents and children should be detained at the border if they are entering the country illegally. Blum, who is running for a third term in the 20-county northe...
Read more
This past week, Congressman Blum introduced an amendment to the Water Resources Development Act of 2018 (WRDA) to prioritize the completion of the Cedar Rapids flood mitigation project. The amendment was adopted, passed the House, and awaits further consideration in the Senate. This amendment is Rep. Blum’s most recent action in continued efforts to secure funding for the Cedar Rapids flood wall. Since being elected in 2015, and in conjunction with Senator Grassley and Senator Ernst, Rep. Blum h...
Read more
"Local officials, along with its congressional delegation of Sen. Joni Ernst, Sen. Chuck Grassley and Rep. Rod Blum, have been lobbying hard for years, and perhaps more so in the past six months, to shake loose federal aid that was authorized but not released. The authorized project factors in $78 million from the federal government, which still is a small portion of the overall $750 million project budget. The flood control system would have 7.5 miles of flood walls, levees, gates and pump stat...
Read more
Congressman Rod Blum held three district events to present an outstanding student from each high school in Iowa's First District with a Congressional Merit Award to highlight their accomplishments. The first ceremony was held at the Hotel Winneshiek in Decorah to honor: Abraham Schwartz from Waukon High School Cody Mueller from Central Community School Alicia Klimesh from Turkey Valley High School Jarod Phillips from Decorah High School (not pictured) Spencer Kuhn from Riceville High School Kari...
Read more
"Dave from Waterloo Asks: Why am I required to pay taxes on my social security benefits a second time when I already paid those taxes on my earnings to social security in the first place? Dave, great question and I couldn’t agree with you more. I am against the taxation of social security benefits because taxes have been paid on them once already when you earned them years ago. I have co-sponsored H.R. 2552, the Senior Citizens Tax Elimination Act to remove this tax and give relief to senior cit...
Read more
After days of debate on amendments to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the House of Representatives passed the bill yesterday, May 25, 2017. This legislation included two bipartisan amendments introduced by Congressman Blum and his colleagues from both sides of the aisle. The first reauthorized the Boots to Business Program (B2B) to help transitioning service members start and grow small businesses. Congressman Blum has consistently advocated for this program and originally introdu...
Read more
