Your Representatives in the News

State Senator Frank Lasee

Lasee introduced a senate bill regulating employers’, educational institutions’ and landlords’ access to the personal internet accounts of employees, students, tenants and applicants. Under this bill, they wouldn’t be allowed to ask for information to allow them to access or observe personal internet accounts or to penalize against a person refusing to grant access to a personal internet account. Employers, educational institutions and landlords could still view personal internet accounts that are available without account information.

Source: 2013 Senate Bill 223

Governor Scott Walker

On July 5, Walker signed a bill requiring women to get an ultrasound before an abortion, for doctors to point out fetus’ visible organs and external features, and for abortion-providing doctors to have hospital admitting privileges within 30 miles of the clinic. The new law will force clinics in Appleton and Milwaukee to close, making abortions only available in Milwaukee and Madison.

U.S. District Judge William Conley issued a restraining order to block the enforcement of the new law after Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin and the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit alleging the law violates the U.S. Constitution’s due process guarantee because it treats abortion-providing doctors differently than other doctors.

A hearing will take place in July, and the state will have to prove the restrictions on abortion rights must reasonably preserve mothers’ health.

Source:  The Associated Press

U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin

Student loan rates doubled on July 1 from 3.4 to 6.8 percent. Baldwin is cosponsoring a plan that would bring the rates back to 3.4 percent for another year.

“We have got to constantly ask ourselves how college can be made affordable and accessible to all,” Baldwin said at a press conference at the University of Wisconsin – Madison. “How we can make it a pathway to the middle class, not a pathway to indebtedness.”

Source:  Baldwin email, The Cap Times

U.S. Representative Reid Ribble

A group of senior citizens from the Wisconsin Chapter of the Alliance for Retired Americans protested outside Ribble’s Green Bay office, asking him to reconsider his position on a federal bill that would tie cost of living increases to the consumer price index in Social Security, called “chained CPI.”

The chained CPI would measure the cost of living by assuming that people substitute expensive options with cheaper ones when prices rise, making cost of living adjustments lower than under the traditional consumer price index formula.

The group said the cost of living increases wouldn’t keep up with medical expenses – because while it’s fine to purchase cheaper food as prices rise, it’s not acceptable to undergo cheaper medical procedures to substitute better, more expensive ones.

Source:  Wisconsin Public Radio, AARP

President Barack Obama

Obama visited the Archbishop Desmond Tutu HIV Foundation Youth Centre in Cape Town, South Africa, on June 30 during his trip to Africa.

“We have a possibility of achieving an AIDS-free generation and making sure that everyone in our human family is able to enjoy their lives, raise families, succeed and maintain their health here in Africa and round the world,” Obama said.

Source:  UNAIDS.org