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113th Congress

August 30, 2013
News Articles
Scientists say the San Francisco Bay Area needs 100,000 acres of wetlands to supply a healthy bay.

A project to restore the Napa Sonoma Salt Marsh, which sits on the edge of San Pablo Bay, will provide 10,000 acres toward meeting that need, and a newly completed recycled water pipeline to the area is a linchpin in reducing salinity in 640 acres, said Nadine Peterson, deputy executive officer of the California Coastal Conservancy.
Issues:Energy & Environment

August 29, 2013
U.S. Rep. Mike Thompson, Chairman of the House Gun Violence Prevention Task Force, released the following statement on the swearing in of Todd Jones as the Director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) and the Obama Administration's releasing of new executive actions to reduce gun violence.

August 28, 2013
U.S. Rep. Mike Thompson (CA-5) today announced grants from the Department of Transportation (DOT) totaling $39.7 million for Charles M. Schulz-Sonoma County Airport. The funds will be used to lengthen and improve the safety of the airport's runways. The runway project will help the airport accommodate regional jets flying longer distances to and from an increased number of air travel destinations.

August 28, 2013
News Articles
Business leaders and builders joined city, county and federal officials Wednesday to celebrate the imminent start of a $53.8 million project to lengthen the runways at Charles M. Schulz-Sonoma County Airport.

“Is this a great day, huh?” County Supervisor Mike McGuire told a crowd gathered inside a cavernous hangar for the runway project's ceremonial groundbreaking.

Scheduled for completion in October 2014, the project will fulfill a plan hatched 15 years ago to make the county's only commercial airport safer â€" and potentially attract more air traffic.
Issues:Jobs & Economy

August 16, 2013
U.S. Rep. Mike Thompson (CA-5), a senior member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, released the following statement today after the Washington Post reported that National Security Administration (NSA) violated privacy rules thousands of times according to an internal audit and other documents.

August 16, 2013
News Articles

U.S. Rep. Mike Thompson, D-St. Helena, had no trouble dispatching clay targets with a shotgun in a shooting range east of Napa Friday afternoon as he engaged a local gun dealer in a friendly skeet shooting competition.

But Thompson acknowledged that getting a bill through Congress to expand background checks for firearm purchases nationwide has been more troublesome.


August 16, 2013
News Articles

Just because his wife, former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, was nearly killed in a mass shooting, doesn't mean Mark Kelly hates guns.

On the contrary.

The retired astronaut and Navy captain owns a small arsenal of pistols and rifles.

Kelly demonstrated his fondness for firearms at a gun range in Napa on Friday. He slipped two red shells into a double-barrel shotgun, raised it to his shoulder and yelled, “Pull!”

He fired once, shattering a bright orange disc as it sailed through the air.


August 13, 2013
News Articles

Milton Tepeyac, who served eight years as a U.S. Marine, scrapes by on $3 an hour in this northern Mexican city, where he has lived since the U.S. government deported him in April.

His rented room floods when it rains. Scorpions skitter in. To kill them, he had to pay an exterminator $40 â€" a third of his weekly paycheck.

Once he served in Kuwaiti in a recon battalion, a highly trained grunt monitoring the movements of Saddam Hussein's military across the border in Iraq.

Issues:Veterans

August 12, 2013
U.S. Rep. Mike Thompson (CA-5) was inducted into the California Waterfowler's Hall of Fame yesterday. The Waterfowler's Hall of Fame was established in 2006 by the California Fish and Game Commission to recognize individuals who have made significant contributions to enhancing and conserving waterfowl and their habitats in the state. Thompson is the first sitting elected official to be inducted into the Hall of Fame.

August 8, 2013
News Articles
U.S. Reps. Mike Thompson (CA-5) and Lee Terry (NE-2) introduced H.R. 2969 on Aug. 4, the bipartisan “Medicare Patient Access to Hospice Act,” which expands access to high quality health care by allowing physician assistants to continue caring for Medicare patients after they move from the hospital to hospice care. Currently, physician assistants cannot be reimbursed by Medicare for hospice services. The Medicare Patient Access to Hospice Act addresses this problem.
Issues:Health Care