This week I returned to Washington, D.C. after a great week in the district that included our four-hour town hall meeting. We live in an incredible country where we can all voice our concerns and play a role in the direction that we’re headed. I believe this conversation was especially important ahead of the President’s Address before a joint session of Congress this past Tuesday.

I was in the chamber for the address and was glad to hear a vision of bipartisanship to try to bridge some of the differences in opinion that were on display at our town hall. While we may not agree on every issue, I do believe that there is far more that unites us than divides us.

Here are just a few of the steps that I took this week to bring our nation together and put people before politics:

• I spoke on the House Floor urging President Trump to include Everglades restoration in his call for a "bold" and "daring" trillion-dollar infrastructure proposal. The President often touts his record of building world-class projects ahead of schedule and under budget, so I'm calling on him to lead an Everglades Restoration Infrastructure Task Force to secure new funding for and accelerate completion of projects impacting the harmful Lake Okeechobee discharges and algae blooms in our community.
   
• We also took bipartisan action to increase transparency around and eliminate burdensome red tape. We passed the Regulatory Integrity Act, which requires publication of information related to pending regulations, and we also passed the SCRUB Act to create a commission to identify duplicative, redundant and obsolete regulations. These bills will allow us to save taxpayers money without jeopardizing the effectiveness of important regulations, like those that protect our environment and safeguard seniors.