Long and productive day on the Hill

What a busy day on Capitol Hill today. I started with a tour of the Capitol building. Wow, what a beautiful place! Did you know that each state gets to send two statues to be on display in the Capitol Building? Indiana has Oliver Hazard Perry Morton and Lewis Wallace. My favorite statue was Ronald Reagan from California. He really stood out amongst all of the older statue designs. What was great about it is they actually used pieces of the Berlin Wall in the base of the statue. What an experience!

I was lucky enough to have gotten Gallery passes from Representative Burton's office yesterday. With these passes I was able to visit both the House and the Senate Floor. With the Gallery passes they let you go into the balcony while congress is in session. It is really cool to see it all in action! If you ever visit Washington DC make sure to get Gallery passes from your Congressperson's office. All you have to do is walk into their office and ask for them. You do have to go through a great deal of security to get in but it is worth it.

I then visited Representative Carson's office. I met with his staff person Amirah Salaam. She was very nice and interested in the field of early childhood. She asked me to send her further information on some of NACCRRA's agenda. It is always a good sign when they ask for more information to be sent to them. I shared with her about a scandal that is occurring in the Wisconsin's CCDF voucher system. Among other things they have discovered that they have been paying voucher dollars to at least 4 child care sites that have registered sex offenders living at them. They have also discovered that the program has been paying almost 500 child care providers who have a criminal history. I shared this information with Representative Carson's office in hope that they may be able to use it to get Representatives from Wisconsin to co-sponsor his recent bill to require all licensed child care providers and any provider who receives CCDF vouchers to have comprehensive background checks.

By the time I got back to NACCRRA's office Amirah had already emailed me about an event that is occurring tomorrow on the Hill that she thought that I might like to attend. So.... Tomorrow I will be attending the Congressional briefing on Children in the Federal Budget being sponsored by First Focus. I will let you know how it goes. Have a good night everyone, I am off to attend the Parent Webinar that is being sponsored by NACCRRA tonight. This isn't the first NACCRRA webinar I have participated in but it is the first one I have attended in person.

By the way... did you know that the Cannon House Office Building has a beauty shop in it? I found that to be very interesting.