Van Hollen

I read with some amusement your article about Rep. Chris Van Hollen's participation in the Obama re-election campaign ("Van Hollen gains unexpected role in the Obama campaign," Aug. 26). While Mr. Van Hollen spends his time traveling around the nation making speeches, I have been quietly meeting and talking with voters around the new 8th Congressional District, which now includes most of Carroll and Frederick counties in addition to parts of Montgomery County. Your article presents it as a remarkable achievement that Mr. Van Hollen has "breakfasted with small business owners in Westminster" and "shaken hands at the Montgomery County Agricultural Fair.

Even as he campaigns for re-election to Congress, Rep. Chris Van Hollen has been tapped by the Obama campaign to help lead the Democratic rebuttal to Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan — a role that is taking him to battleground states around the nation. When Ryan hit the campaign trail last month with presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney, Van Hollen was giving national interviews criticizing the Wisconsin lawmaker's budget proposals. The Montgomery County Democrat has traveled to the swing states of New Hampshire and North Carolina to speak against Ryan's plans to cut taxes, slash spending and overhaul entitlement programs — turning Medicare, for example, into a voucher program.

Montgomery County Rep. Chris Van Hollen is the latest Democrat from Maryland to land a speaking role in Charlotte next week, Democratic National Convention organizers announced Friday. The addition of Van Hollen's name to the lineup is not a surprise. As the ranking Democrat on the House Budget Committee, he is well suited to counter Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan, the chairman of that committee. In fact, Van Hollen has been doing so for weeks, including during a trip to the Republican convention in Tampa this past week.

A Maryland congressman called on regulators to amp up pressure on the state's electric utilities Thursday after last month's derecho left some customers without power for more than a week. In a scathing analysis of the utilities' response, Rep. Chris Van Hollen added his voice to a chorus of local elected leaders who have called on Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. and Pepco, which serves the Washington region, to bury at least some power lines. The Montgomery County Democrat also said the state should consider a proposal circulating in Annapolis to impose heavy fines on the companies.

Reps. Roscoe G. Bartlett and Chris Van Hollen are planning to take service members past and present to President Barack Obama's State of the Union Address Tuesday evening. Bartlett, a Western Maryland Republican, and Van Hollen, a Montgomery County Democrat, are among some two dozen lawmakers participating in the bipartisan effort organized by the House Committee on Veterans' Affairs and the House National Guard and Reserve Components Caucus to help focus attention on veterans' needs.

Maryland's congressional delegation will have unusual influence in helping to resolve big issues left hanging on Capitol Hill, because two of the state's lawmakers were appointed Friday to help sort out differences between House and Senate legislation. Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin and Rep. Chris Van Hollen, both Democrats, were appointed to the conference committee that is charged with finding a compromise on a one-year extension of the payroll tax cut and unemployment benefits, along with a continuation of the current rate that Medicare pays to doctors.

For Rep. Chris Van Hollen, brokering a bipartisan deal to trim the federal deficit is about more than dodging draconian across-the-board cuts or protecting a fragile economic recovery. It's also about proving that a bitterly divided Congress can still get something done. As a member of the congressional "supercommittee" charged with slashing U.S. budget deficits by $1.2 trillion, the Montgomery County Democrat is again at the center of the most pressing question facing Washington: how to balance spending cuts, taxes and the increasingly partisan politics of Capitol Hill.

Gov. Martin O'Malley said Thursday night that two Maryland congressmen - one Democrat, one Republican - have asked him to make "substantial" changes in the state's proposed new political map. O'Malley spoke after back-to-back meetings in the State House with Rep. Christopher Van Hollen, a Montgomery County Democrat, and Rep. Roscoe G. Bartlett, a Western Maryland Republican. "Both of them had alternative suggestions," O'Malley said. "Both of them want to retain as many of their traditional citizens and neighborhoods as possible.

If Maryland is to raise significant new revenue to meet its backlog of transportation needs - most likely through a higher gas tax - 2012 is the year it must be done, a leading lawmaker told a gathering of Baltimore business leaders Monday. Speaking at the Greater Baltimore Committee's annual transportation summit, state Senate Majority Leader Rob Garagiola warned that any political will to raise money for highways, transit and other transportation needs will dwindle as legislators approach the 2014 state elections.

Thank you to Congressman Chris Van Hollen for his recent article on the devastating impact of federal cuts to the Medicaid program. ("Medicaid Cuts would hurts us all," July 25.) Maryland's Medicaid program supports seniors in nursing homes, the disabled, as well as pregnant women and children below or near the poverty level. Investments in pregnant women and young children are prevention at its finest and the kind of cost effective health care expenditures that bear the most promise in reducing our country's high health care expenditures, while providing health care for our most vulnerable citizens.