Government Reform

WASHINGTON -- As airlines continue to fail consumers, with refund complaints still 11,000 percent above pre-pandemic levels, Representatives Steve Cohen (TN-09) and Jamie Raskin (MD-08) and Senators Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) introduced their Cash Refunds for Flight Cancellations Act, legislation to provide consumers an enforceable right to a full cash refund when airlines cancel their flight.

WASHINGTON – Representatives Steve Cohen, André Carson, Barbara Lee, Danny K. Davis, Donald M. Payne Jr., Gwen Moore, and Henry C. “Hank” Johnson Jr. today reintroduced a measure to remove the name of longtime Federal Bureau of Investigation Director J. Edgar Hoover from the FBI headquarters building in downtown Washington, D.C.

The measure is co-sponsored by an additional 13 members of Congress.

WASHINGTON – Congressman Steve Cohen (TN-09) today wrote to Comptroller General Gene L. Dodaro of the U.S. Government Accountability Office seeking a review of the federal government’s costs associated with treating patients who used asbestos-contaminated Johnson & Johnson baby powder and became ill because of their exposure to this known carcinogen.

The letter reads in part:

WASHINGTON – Congressman Steve Cohen (TN-09) will attend this evening’s State of the Union address by President Biden as the nation continues to register major progress in employment, rising wages, investments in infrastructure, ending the COVID-19 pandemic, slowing inflation, and addressing domestic and international threats to democracy. Prior to the President’s remarks, Congressman Cohen made the following statement:

WASHINGTON – Congressman Steve Cohen (TN-09), the newly appointed Ranking Member of the Aviation Subcommittee, today questioned expert witnesses at a full Transportation and Infrastructure Committee hearing on Reauthorization of the Federal Aviation Administration.  Congress periodically reauthorizes the FAA and other Federal civil aviation programs through an FAA reauthorization bill. The FAA was last reauthorized when Congress passed and the President signed the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2018.

MEMPHIS – Congressman Steve Cohen (TN-09) has been closely following developments in today’s shooting at the Poplar-White Station Public Library in East Memphis in which a Memphis Police Officer was wounded and another individual was killed, and made the following statement:

WASHINGTON -- Congressmen Steve Cohen (TN-09), Jesús “Chuy” García (IL-04) and Ro Khanna (CA-17) and Senators Edward J. Markey (D-Massachusetts) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut) today reintroduced the Forbidding Airlines from Imposing Ridiculous (FAIR) Fees Act. This bicameral legislation would prohibit airlines from charging fees – including bag, seating, cancellation, and change fees – that are not reasonable or proportional to the costs of the services actually provided.

WASHINGTON – Representatives Steve Cohen (TN-09), Bill Keating (MA-09), Joe Wilson (SC-02) and Maria Elvira Salazar (FL-27) along with U.S. Senators Ben Cardin (D-MD) and Todd Young (R-IN) today re-introduced the Combating Global Corruption Act, bipartisan, bicameral legislation that would raise the profile of efforts to fight international corruption by evaluating and publicly naming countries where corruption is rampant.