1st District Congressional Update

By Steve Largent U.S. Representative (R)-Oklahoma 1st Congressional District <a href="http://www.house.gov/writerep">e-mail Steve Largent </a> or visit the <a href="http://www.house.gov/largent">

Friday, February 16th 2001, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

By Steve Largent
U.S. Representative (R)-Oklahoma
1st Congressional District

e-mail Steve Largent or visit the 1st District website.

Networks held accountable for faulty election coverage

This past Wednesday, the House Commerce Committee conducted a hearing into mistakes by the major television networks in their 2000 Election Night coverage. Heads of Fox News, CBS News, CNN, NBC News and ABC News all admitted their networks used faulty projections in declaring Al Gore the winner in Florida before all of the polls of that state had closed. Each of the networks later declared the election was too close to call. The network officials promised under oath to never again project a winner in a state until all the polls in the state are closed.

Military gets top-to-bottom review

President Bush has ordered the Secretary of Defense to conduct a complete review of our armed services, analyzing the state of our military strategy, the structure of our forces and the priorities of our budget. Experts tell me this is an important first step in creating the military of the future â€“ lethal, agile and easier to deploy. While some existing weapons will need to be modernized, the larger goal will be to skip a generation of technology, replacing existing systems with new technologies and strategies. I applaud the Presidentâ€™s vision of having a strong national defense made ready for the challenges of a new century.

House passes lockbox bill

This week the House voted to establish a procedure to safeguard the combined surpluses of the Social Security and Medicare hospital insurance trust funds. The "Social Security and Medicare Lockbox Act of 2001" (H.R. 2) locks up the $2.9 trillion surplus from the Social Security and Medicare trust fund. Senior citizens and all Americans deserve to know that Medicare and Social Security will be there when they need it. It is wrong for Washington to spend these trust fund dollars on unrelated programs.