In the News

Buttigieg visited Kansas City, Kansas, on Friday to discuss how the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill will modernize infrastructure across the U.S.

With the Rock Island Bridge as a backdrop, U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg on Friday touted the Biden administration's $1 trillion infrastructure bill to fund improvements such as roads, bridges and public transportation in places like Kansas City, Kansas.

U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg promoted the funding for bridge safety included in the new federal infrastructure law during a visit to Kansas City, Kan., on Friday, just hours after a bridge collapse in Pittsburgh.

Missouri and Kansas will receive $96.9 million and $45 million respectively over the next year under the new law to help fix thousands of bridges in need of repair — including some likely comparable to Pittsburgh's 50-year-old Forbes Avenue Bridge.

Businesswomen in Kansas City met with Kansas Rep. Sharice Davids on Thursday morning to discuss legislation she filed that would improve resources and opportunities for women entrepreneurs.

The Women's Business Centers Improvement Act, which passed with unanimous bipartisan support in Congress two years ago, with reintroduced by Davids and New York Rep. Claudia Tenney.

The women in the Kansas City roundtable included:

Heather Rubesch, a Prairie Village resident, went into her battle with breast cancer in September 2017 thinking finances would be the least of her worries.

But when paying for her care drained her and her husband's $8,000 emergency fund early in year two, she became worried.

Now, four years later and cancer-free, she estimates her out-of-pocket expenses total $50,000 — and she's accumulated about $2 million in medical bills.

U.S. Rep. Sharice Davids, D-3rd Dist., and Rep. Claudia Tenney, R-N.Y., have jointly introduced the Women's Business Centers Improvement Act.

The legislation would increase access to resources and opportunities for female entrepreneurs in Kansas and across the country, according to Rep. Davids.

The bill passed the last Congress with unanimous bipartisan support and is being reintroduced this session.

On Jan. 1, amid celebrations, fireworks and last-minute resolutions, American health care policy took a major step forward for patients. You may have missed it — but for millions of Americans who have been asking for relief on health care costs and me, it was the culmination of years of work to make our system more affordable, fair and accessible.

Because on New Year's Day, new consumer protections against surprise medical billing went into effect, essentially ending one of the most egregious practices in our country's health care system.

On Thursday, U.S. Representatives Dusty Johnson (R-S.D.), Tom O'Halleran (D-AZ), Tom Cole (R-OK), and Sharice Davids (D-KS) introduced bipartisan legislation to establish a Congressional Charter for the National American Indian Veterans (NAIV). NAIV is a nonprofit organization on the Cheyenne River Reservation with a mission to advocate for tribal veterans.

Missouri and Kansas are set to receive $96.9 million and $45 million respectively in federal funding over the next year to help fix thousands of bridges that have fallen into disrepair, the White House announced Friday.

The money is the first tranche of hundreds of millions in federal aid for bridge repairs over the next five years — Missouri is set to receive $484 million and Kansas is set to receive $225 million — part of a larger $1.2 trillion infrastructure measure signed into law by Biden in November and backed by a bipartisan coalition of Republican and Democratic lawmakers.