Happy New Year!

My team and I wrapped up another great year – fighting for policies that will help hardworking Arkansan and American families and job creators thrive. It’s an honor to serve you, and my team and I stand ready to help you in every way we can.

Highlights from 2017 include securing for Central Arkansans nearly $2 million in individual veterans benefits and $4 million in federal grants - along with 50 passports and 500 U.S. Capitol tours. In total, my team and I worked with nearly 1,000 constituents on issues before the federal government including before the Social Security Administration and the Internal Revenue Service.

I am proud of Central Arkansas’s students. We had three times as many students as last year participant in my annual Congressional App Challenge featuring our state’s accomplishments in the technology and coding fields. Earlier this year, I awarded my Educational Achievement Award to 41 outstanding high school seniors and juniors. My 2017-18 Future Leaders Council is up and running, and the meetings with these fifth graders give me great insight for my work in Washington on their behalf. As the Co-Chair of the Congressional Skilled American Workforce Caucus, I continue to work with my colleagues to highlight the opportunities available for students outside of the traditional four-year college experience, including skilled trade education.

This past September, Little Rock celebrated the 60th anniversary of nine brave Arkansans in their role in ending “separate but equal.” At that same time, my bill to expand the National Historic Site at Little Rock Central High School passed the House 390-0. I am pleased to report that the bill just cleared the Senate to head to the President’s desk for signature. As a passionate supporter of history and the National Park Service, I am proud that this bill will protect the seven homes across the street from the high school, giving visitors the opportunity to put themselves into a living historical marker and reflect upon the 21 days in September 1957 that gripped our nation as Central High was integrated.

I recently joined Arkansas National Guard Adjutant General Major General Mark Berry to welcome home soldiers of the 1-153rd returning from Djibouti. I am proud to support Arkansas’s veterans and our service men and women—and their families. This past November, the Chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee, Congressman Phil Roe, and I met in Little Rock with more than 100 of central Arkansas’s veterans to talk about Congress’s efforts for a VA that is accountable, responsive, and flexible. I voted for the VA Accountability and Whistleblower Protection Act to give the Secretary authority to remove bad actors, and we’ve already seen improvements. I was proud to vote for a much-deserved 2.4 percent pay raise for our military, and I will continue to work on ways to decrease the Pentagon’s fiscal inefficiency and burdensome bureaucracy.

We also achieved a major victory this past year in Congress by passing tax reform legislation to help hardworking Arkansas families keep more of their hard-earned dollars, to bring jobs back home, and to create new jobs. Reforming our broken tax code is about providing better opportunities for our children and grandchildren to succeed and live out their dreams. 

It is a privilege to share these updates with you; thank you for reading them. If there is anything I can do to serve you and your family better, please reach out to my office at (501) 324-5941 or at www.hill.house.gov.

Sincerely,

Representative French Hill