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Today, the House passed three more key bills to hold federal contractors accountable and crack down on fraud and abuse. U.S. taxpayers are outraged at the massive levels of waste, fraud and abuse that have been documented in large government contracts to well-connected firms, such as the $45 billion in reconstruction contracts in Iraq.

These three bills are:

By obstructing a vote on the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, Senate Republicans have thwarted efforts to restore balance in the law and allow victims of wage discrimination to seek justice in the courts. In so doing, they have again stopped necessary progress for all Americans.

The Ledbetter legislation, which the House proudly passed last year, provides a remedy for women and men who have been victims of pay discrimination.

Speaker Pelosi sent the following letter today to House Republican Leader John Boehner in response to a letter sent to the Speaker yesterday by the GOP leadership.

Below is a text of the letter:

April 23, 2008

The Honorable John A. Boehner

House Republican Leader

H-204, The Capitol

Washington, D.C. 20515

Thank you for your letter from the House GOP leadership yesterday on the issue of gas prices.

On March 3rd, 2008 the Oversight Committee released a report, "The Administration's Medicaid Regulations: State-By-State Impacts." The report examined seven Administration-imposed Medicaid regulations which, if implemented, would slash federal Medicaid funding to states for vital programs and services by about $18 billion over the next five years. They would reverse longstanding Medicaid policies and eliminate federal payments for a variety of critical Medicaid functions.

Today in a letter to EPA Administrator Johnson, Chairman Henry Waxman of the Oversight Committee requested that he be prepared to testify in May regarding the recently released Union of Concerned Scientists Report documenting extensive and widespread political interference with the work of scientists at EPA.

Full text of the letter:

The price for regular gasoline reached a record $3.53 per gallon today -- 23 percent more than this time last year and 140 percent more than when President Bush took office. The Democratic-led Congress has passed a number of key bills to reduce the burden of rising gas prices on Americans and make America less dependent on foreign oil -- but the President has threatened to veto each one.

The Oversight Committee is currently holding a hearing, "Domestic Abstinence-Only Programs: Assessing the Evidence" Federally-funded abstinence-only programs require the exclusive teaching of abstinence until marriage and prohibit teaching about condoms or other contraceptives -- other than to discuss failure rates. These programs have received over $1.3 billion in federal funding over the past decade.

Today is Equal Pay Day, the day which marks how far into the year a woman must work, on average, to earn as much as a man earned the previous year. President John Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act in 1963, yet the wage gap between men and women is narrowing by less than half a percent per year. In 2006, women earned only 77 cents for every dollar earned by men. African American women earn just 63 cents on the dollar, and Hispanic American women fare worse, at 52 cents.