The Alabama House

Republican Caucus

Promises Kept:2013 Legislative Accomplishments

Overview

• In 2010, House Republicans vowed to put an end to the broken status quo. We committed to passing sweeping reforms, promoting job creation, and protecting our rights and values. In 2013, we continued to deliver on that promise.

• The ‘We Dare Defend Our Rights’ legislative agenda has successfully shielded Alabama from the liberal policies of President Obama and the ever-encroaching federal government.

• We continued to make Alabama an attractive place for business by cutting the red-tape and focusing on job creation. Resulting in lower unemployment and more Alabamians working across the state.

Daring to Defend Your RightsTHE RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS• To fend off President Obama’s full frontal attack

on our 2nd amendment rights, we passed some of the strongest gun rights protections in the country.

• Our omnibus gun bill ensures Alabamians have the right to protect themselves while also ensuring public safety concerns are addressed.

• The Alabama Firearms Protection Amendment requires future courts to use strict judicial scrutiny in evaluating state laws that infringe on the right to keep and bear arms.

Daring to Defend Your RightsTHE RIGHT TO LIFE• Since the U.S. Supreme Court unfortunately

allows abortion to remain legal, we passed legislation to protect the health and safety of women while defending the rights of the unborn.

• For far too long, Alabama has had more health regulations in place to protect your cat or dog at a vet clinic than it does for a woman receiving an abortion – the Women’s Health and Safety Act corrects that shameful disparity.

Promise Kept

• We promised to repay the $437 million borrowed from the Alabama Trust Fund and we kept our promise passing legislation to guarantee repayment in a timely manner.

• The People’s Trust Act was the first bill passed in the House and the first bill signed by the Governor.

Fiscal Responsibility

We passed conservative, fiscally responsible budgets that ensure Alabama lives within its means.

Education Trust Fund• Investing in education is a continued priority. • This year’s ETF budget protects funding for K-12 education programs

while also giving teachers a deserved 2% pay raise in addition to liability insurance.

General Fund• We ensured that essential services were adequately funded all while

reducing funding for the Legislature by nearly $1.7 million.• Most state agencies were level funded and the budget also includes

the first installment toward repaying money borrowed from the Alabama Trust Fund last September.

Improving Educational Outcomes

The Alabama Accountability Act• There is no more important constituency than

our children, and parents, not zip codes should make decisions about their children’s education.

• Through tax credits and a scholarship program we have brought school choice to Alabama.

• Families and children now have more educational options than ever before.

Improving Educational OutcomesProtecting Alabama Schoolchildren• Alabama parents should be confident that their students

are safe from the moment they step on the school bus to the moment they arrive home from school.

• In the wake of the terrible tragedy in Newtown, CT, we made a concerted effort to analyze our school safety measures and make recommendations to ensure Alabama schools are some of the safest in the country.• School Resource Officers: Local school systems now have the ability

to use education funds, with the approval of the local board of education, to hire armed, APOST-certified school resource officers.

• Code Red Drills: To ensure that students, teachers, and school personnel are prepared for all situations we have added “Code Red” drills to the list of those required to be performed each semester.

• School Bus Safety: It is now a crime for individuals to trespass on school busses across the state.

Creating Jobs

• Since Republicans have held the majority the economy has continued to improve, there have been more than 40,000 new jobs in Alabama since 2011 and several new business have broken ground in the state.

• This session, we continued our pro-business, pro-private sector focus by passing important legislation that will open the door for suppliers of the $600 million Airbus assembly plant in Mobile to locate in Alabama. 

• We made a strategic investment of several million dollars in career technical training as well as dramatically reducing the red tape requirements on businesses – all to continue creating more jobs for the hardworking people of our state.

• Working alongside the Governor we have created an environment that has dropped the unemployment rate to 7.2% statewide.

Government EfficiencyWhile President Obama and the Democrats in Washington are spending more and more on entitlements, in Alabama, we are streamlining and making government more efficient.

Streamlining Government• We believe that taxpayers deserve the most efficient and

streamlined government possible and across the board we have taken on efforts to maximize efficiencies.

• Through consolidation of law enforcement agencies, streamlining the state’s IT functions and efforts to streamline the management of state-owned motor vehicles – we are saving taxpayers millions of dollars.

Government EfficiencyMedicaid• Unlike Democrats who called for an expansion of the

broken, inefficient and overly expensive Medicaid program, we passed legislation to streamline the program and make it more beneficial to the people who need it most.

• Our Medicaid reforms eliminate the current fee-for-service model of paying providers and establish locally-controlled managed care networks which will provide incentives to regional organizations to oversee and improve patient care in order to reduce costs. We expect this bill to save hundreds of millions of dollars for the state.

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