Columbus Ledger-Enquirer: Washington Notes

By Halimah Abdullah
Sunday, April 3, 2011

Military family caucus: Rep. Sanford Bishop, D-Albany, continued to press the case for improved treatment of military families. In a column co-authored with Rep. Cathy McMorris-Rodgers, R-Wash., the two lawmakers discussed why they came together to create the bipartisan Congressional Military Family Caucus.

Bishop and McMorris-Rodgers also recently introduced a bill with Reps. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., and Loretta Sanchez, D-Calif., that would create flexible spending accounts for military families.

“Right now, FSAs are available to civilian employees at the Defense Department, but not to uniformed service members and their families. That’s wrong,” Bishop and McMorris-Rodgers wrote in their column for Roll Call, a Capitol Hill publication. “There is no reason military personnel shouldn’t have the same access to FSAs as their civilian counterparts. And that’s why we’re going to work together in a bipartisan way to advance this bill through Congress and have it signed into law.”