Media
Latest News
March 30, 2021
Press Release
WASHINGTON, DC – Chairman Robert C. “Bobby” Scott (VA-03) issued the following statement after the Department of Education announced it will pause collections and interest accrual on commercially-held student loans under the Family Federal Education Loan Program (c-FFEL) for borrowers who are in default. “Today, the Biden administration took another step to expand relief for struggling student loan borrowers amid the COVID-19 pandemic. While Congress previously paused interest accrual and collections for distressed borrowers with federally held loans, these provisions did not cover borrowers with commercially-held loans under the Family Federal Education Loan Program (c-FFEL).
March 26, 2021
Press Release
WASHINGTON, DC — Today, at the start of National Farmworkers Week (March 25-31), Chairman Robert C. “Bobby” Scott (VA-03) joined Reps. Judy Chu (CA-27), Raúl M. Grijalva (AZ-03) and Alma Adams (NC-12) to introduce legislation to ensure the safety and health of workers who are exposed to dangerous heat conditions in the workplace. The Asunción Valdivia Heat Illness and Fatality Prevention Act is named in honor of Asunción Valdivia who died in 2004 after picking grapes for ten hours straight in 105-degree temperatures.
Issues:
March 25, 2021
Press Release
NEWPORT NEWS, VA –Earlier today, Congressman Bobby Scott (VA-03) applauded the Biden-Harris Administration for announcing a series of actions to expand access to COVID-19 vaccines to the hardest-hit and highest-risk communities across the country. With funding from the American Rescue Plan, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will invest almost $7.5 million to community health centers in Hampton Roads. As chair of the House Education and Labor Committee, Congressman Scott was critical in the drafting and passage of the American Rescue Plan.
Issues:
March 25, 2021
Press Release
WASHINGTON, DC – Today, Rep. Mark Takano (D-CA), Rep. Alma Adams (D-NC), Rep. Bobby Scott (D-VA), and Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH), sent a letter to Secretary Marty Walsh urging the Department of Labor to take strong action to restore overtime pay protections for millions of workers. In the letter they state, “In 2016, the Obama Administration’s DOL finalized a rule (Obama Rule) that would have increased the salary threshold to the 40th percentile of earnings of full-time, salaried workers in the lowest wage Census Region, a rate equaling $47,476 in 2016. This threshold represented a conservative salary threshold. Historically, the salary threshold has ranged from the 35th to 55th percentile of weekly earnings for full-time, salaried workers nationwide.
March 25, 2021
Press Release
Congressman Bobby Scott will be hosting another Telephone Town Hall to discuss the American Rescue Plan passed by Congress and signed into law by President Biden. The town hall will take place on Monday, March 29th at 7:00 p.m. The purpose of this town hall will be to discuss how the American Rescue Plan will help end the COVID-19 pandemic and rebuild our economy by safely re-opening schools, ramping up vaccinations, putting money in people’s pockets and putting people back in jobs. Congressman Scott will also be joined by Dr. Danny Avula who is the coordinator for Virginia’s vaccine distribution.
March 23, 2021
Press Release
WASHINGTON, DC – Today, Chairman Robert C. “Bobby” Scott (VA-03), House Committee on Education and Labor, and Chair Patty Murray (D-WA), Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, filed resolutions of disapproval against the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) “conciliation” rule. This rule tips the scale in favor of employers within EEOC’s process for settling claims the EEOC has already established have merit, making it harder for workers—tens of thousands of whom file discrimination charges with EEOC each year—to enforce their workplace rights.
March 23, 2021
Press Release
WASHINGTON, DC – Today, U.S. Sens. Mark R. Warner and Tim Kaine (both D-VA), along with U.S. Reps. Bobby Scott (D-VA), Rob Wittman (R-VA), Gerry Connolly (D-VA), Morgan Griffith (R-VA), Don Beyer (D-VA), A. Donald McEachin (D-VA), Abigail Spanberger (D-VA), Elaine Luria (D-VA), Ben Cline (R-VA), Jennifer Wexton (D-VA), and Bob Good (R-VA) requested that the Biden administration prioritize the Norfolk Harbor Widening and Deepening project by including at least $83.7 million for the project in the President’s FY22 budget request.
March 18, 2021
Press Release
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Congressman Bobby Scott (VA-03) issued the following statement after the House of Representatives passed H.R. 6, the American Dream and Promise Act of 2021: “Today, I was proud to vote in favor of the American Dream and Promise Act. In 2012, we asked undocumented immigrants who were brought here at a young age, through no fault of their own, to step out of the shadows and undergo robust background checks in exchange for work authorization and temporary relief from deportation. We promised them an opportunity to legally contribute to their communities. Under the DACA program, they have been able to fulfill their dreams of completing college, getting a job, buying a car and owning a home, thereby contributing to our economic growth that benefits all Americans.
Issues:
March 18, 2021
Press Release
WASHINGTON, DC – Chairman Robert C. “Bobby” Scott (VA-03) released the following statement after the Department of Education announced it would provide full debt relief to roughly 72,000 borrowers that were defrauded by Corinthian Colleges and ITT Technical Institute. “Today’s announcement means that tens of thousands of defrauded student loan borrowers will finally be granted the debt relief that they are legally entitled to receive. It has been more than four years since the Department of Education first concluded that these students had been cheated by their institutions and were deserving of full debt relief.
March 18, 2021
Press Release
WASHINGTON, DC – Today, Representatives Bobby Scott (VA-03), chairman of the Committee on Education and Labor, and Rodney Davis (IL-13) led a bipartisan group in introducing the Protecting Older Workers Against Discrimination Act (POWADA), a proposal to strengthen anti-discrimination protections for older workers. They were joined by six Republicans and six Democrats, including Civil Rights and Human Services Subcommittee Chair Suzanne Bonamici (OR-01) and Workforce Protections Subcommittee Chair Alma Adams (NC-12).
Pages
In The News
April 15, 2020
In The News
WASHINGTON — A new plan could mean another life raft for people who lost their jobs because of the coronavirus. Virginia Congressman Bobby Scott, a Democrat from the 3rd District representing the Newport News and Norfolk area, has introduced legislation that would have the federal government pay 100% of COBRA costs during the pandemic.
April 14, 2020
In The News
A new bill from House Democrats, previewed exclusively to Vox, aims to give laid-off or furloughed workers a way to stay on their health insurance plan at no extra cost to them — through increased subsidies with the existing health insurance plan COBRA. COBRA allows laid-off workers to keep buying into their health insurance plans.
April 13, 2020
In The News
NORFOLK, Va. — Congressman Bobby Scott (VA-03) announced Monday that colleges in the state's third congressional district would get $46 million dollars to alleviate the financial effects of coronavirus on higher education. The money will be dispersed between eight schools, and half of the funds will be set aside to provide emergency cash assistance grants to students.
February 6, 2020
In The News
One of the most significant bills to strengthen workers’ abilities to organize in the past 80 years passed the House on Thursday, the latest sign of momentum for the labor movement. The Protecting the Right to Organize Act, known as the PRO Act, would amend some of the country’s decades-old labor laws to give workers more power during disputes at work, add penalties for companies that retaliate against workers who organize and grant some hundreds of thousands of workers collective-bargaining rights they don’t currently have.
October 15, 2019
In The News
The Democratic-controlled House is expected Tuesday to release a plan to make college more affordable and schools more accountable for students’ success, reviving fraught efforts to reauthorize the main federal law governing higher education. Compared with some of the 2020 Democratic presidential candidates’ higher education proposals, including student debt forgiveness, the House bill is pretty tame.
October 11, 2019
In The News
There’s something about FAFSA — that particularly nosy form that students and parents fill out in order to get financial aid for college — that can get in the way of young people actually making it to and through college. And Rep. Robert C. “Bobby” Scott, D-Newport News, says he plans to do something about it.
August 5, 2019
In The News
Sharing a tale of his own about an insurer’s red tape over eye-drops he needed, Rep Robert C. Scott, D-Newport News told staffers and patients at the Hampton Roads Community Health Center’s Portsmouth clinic that the House of Representatives is working on several fronts to tackle the high cost of medication.
Scott said Congress is working on several fronts to address prescription drug costs, with measures looking at more transparency about pricing, new requirements that drug companies justify to big price increases to regulators and measures to encourage competition by generic drugs.
Issues:
July 17, 2019
In The News
After nearly seven in 10 voters in Arkansas decided to increase the state’s minimum wage, Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Newport News, is betting the four GOP members of Congress who represent that state will have a tough time voting against his proposal for a gradual increase in the federal minimum. That federal minimum wage has been set at $7.25 an hour since 2009. Arkansas began raising its minimum in 2014, and voted again last November for another increase.In fact, says Scott, even by 2021, the $11 an hour minimum wage that Arkansas voters set will be higher than the gradual increases his measure would phase in. Scott aims to bring the national minimum to $15 an hour in gradual steps over the next six years.
July 10, 2019
In The News
NEWPORT NEWS, Va. (WAVY) — The residents of City Line and Paula Maria Village apartments on the Peninsula are on the front lines of the rising threat of climate change. Congressman Bobby Scott, city leaders and Florida Representative Kathy Castor (D), the chair of the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis, toured these neighborhoods Tuesday to learn more about the economic and social impact that flooding has on these communities. They say what they’ve learned today puts them on the right track towards change.
Issues:
July 9, 2019
In The News
When the Supreme Court made its landmark ruling in the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education case, declaring racial segregation in public schools to be unconstitutional, Rep. Bobby Scott, D-3rd, was 7 years old. Sixty-five years later, much has changed for the longtime congressman, the chair of the House Education and Labor Committee.