AOC highlights first-term achievements in office

Moses Kuwema

Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her team have highlighted all the achievements the Bronx representative has made over the last two years.

In a video released to showcase her achievements, Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez's first term comes to a close, the 14th

As the first term for the Representative for New York's 14th congressional district comes to a close, Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez said she introduced more amendments that 90 percent of freshman lawmakers, co-sponsoring 78 pieces of legislation that passed the House of Representatives and 14 bills that were signed into law.

Ocasio-Cortez said she successfully shifted $5 million in funds to treatment for opioid addiction from the DEA, secured $10 million in funds to clean up toxic bombardment sites in Vieques, Puerto Rico, banned funds in the House going to the transfer of lethal military equipment to Bolivia, and repealed the Faircloth Amendment in the House, which paves the way for the U.S. to build more public housing for the first time in decades.

She stated that she authored and introduced the Green New Deal with Senator Ed Markey, securing 115 House and Senate co-sponsors.

She said Regional versions of the GND were adopted by ten local governments, including the state of New Mexico and the cities of Austin, Los Angeles, NYC, Boston, and more.

The Congresswoman said with Senator Bernie Sanders, she also unveiled the Green New Deal for Public Housing which would invest up to $180 billion over ten years in sustainable retrofits and create up to a quarter million jobs per year nationwide.

Rep. Ocasio-Cortez said she authored the Just Society suite of bills, which would modernize the federal poverty standard, make immigrants eligible for social safety net programs, require federal contractors to pay $15/hour, strengthen tenant protections, and ease reentry for formerly incarcerated citizens.

Teaming up with Senator Sanders again, the Congresswoman said she introduced the Loan Shark Prevention Act to cap credit card interest rates at 15%.

"As a result of committee hearings, the Congresswoman’s questioning lines have helped: pressure Big Pharma into bringing down the price of PrEP to prevent HIV transmission; expose TransDigm, a defense contractor, into returning $16.1 million in price-gouged profits to the public; pressure Facebook on fact-checking political advertising and expose Mark Zuckerberg’s dinner parties with radical right-wing figures; to get President Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen to state on the record that President Trump was engaging in tax fraud and to name other potential witnesses; and overturned the unjust citizenship question on the Census," reads a statement from the Congresswoman's team.

Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez said she worked with other members to stop the deportation of whistleblowers from the Irwin County Detention Center.

"As human rights violations at our southern border came to light, she traveled to the border to expose abuse of immigrant families in detention and the inhumanity of child separation."

"At home in The Bronx and Queens, the Congresswoman and her congressional team helped over 1,000 constituents with the VA, Social Security, immigration visas and other federal services, attended over 600 events in the district, and hosted 25 town halls. Rep. Ocasio-Cortez was nominated for two Democracy Awards, the first time a Member of Congress was recognized in two categories, for Workplace Environment and Innovation and Modernization.

"She also called for the bailout for taxi cab drivers targeted in predatory lending schemes and tougher oversight of New York City taxi medallion lending," the statement adds.

Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez said when her District became the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic, her campaign team mobilized a full relief operation response that made 200,000 community check in calls, distributed 80,000 meals and 100,000 masks to teachers, small businesses, essential workers, and families in need, and raised $1.25 million for local organizations and charities doing COVID-19 relief.

"As the pandemic worsened, Rep. Ocasio-Cortez introduced the COVID-19 Funeral Assistance Act, which would help families get up to $10K in funeral expenses who lost loved ones to the coronavirus.

"The campaign also hosted 8 training sessions to teach over 10,000 people how to unionize their workplaces, form mutual aid networks and childcare collectives, and more during the pandemic.

"In October, as COVID rates spiked again and NYC schools closed, Team AOC organized and launched a Homework Helpers program that has recruited over 11,000 tutors to offer 1-on-1 help for kids in remote learning.

"While the pandemic surged, the Congresswoman also led a multilingual outreach effort on the Census, which brought in over $58 million to NY-14," r
the statement further explains.

On the presidential campaign, Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez said she co-chaired the Climate Unity Task Force with Secretary John Kerry to help shape President-Elect Biden’s $2 trillion climate policy.

Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez said she also helped raise more than $1.5 million for progressives and swing-district Democrat election races across the country.

"After the general election, Rep. Ocasio-Cortez raised over $600,000 for grassroots organizations in Georgia’s Senate runoff elections, including The New Georgia Project, Fair Fight Action, and Mijente.

"In her own election race, the Congresswoman fended off over $10 million in corporate-backed attacks without taking a single cent from fossil fuel executives or corporate lobbyists, and went on to win re-election with nearly 72% of the vote in the highest-turnout election in NY-14’s modern history," the statement concludes.