From: Danville Register and Bee

Perriello supports rural energy savings bill

 Rep. Tom Perriello, D-5th District, cosponsored a bipartisan energy bill Wednesday that caters to rural areas, according to a news release.

 The bill, H.R. 4785, would establish a “rural energy savings program” to create jobs, lower electric bills for families and businesses and save energy through $4.9 billion in loan authority from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Rural Utilities Service. The loans would create electric cooperatives to offer low-interest loans to families and small businesses for investments in energy-saving retrofit and structural improvements.

 “Rural households are getting hit the hardest with rising energy costs,” Perriello said in a statement. “These efficiency programs will not only create jobs locally, but make our rural homes more sustainable and cost efficient in the long run.” 

From: NBC29 News

Perriello Talks Up The Census

Reported by Kasey Hott

Congressman Tom Perriello took a break from Washington and visited Greene County Saturday to stress the importance of the 2010 Census. 

Perriello stopped at the library in Stanardsville to encourage people to fill out the census forms and to highlight the many jobs that the census bureau has to offer in central Virginia. Perriello says, "So many things in our community - funding for schools, for seniors, political boundaries - are all affected by making sure we have a good, accurate count of the American people." 

The Census will create 1,100 temporary jobs in central Virginia over the next few months. 

From: Grist

Rep. Tom Perriello: ‘Every week the Senate doesn’t act, we’re giving up jobs’ 

by David Roberts

25 Feb 2010 10:04 AM

Rep. Tom Perriello won one of the most celebrated upsets of 2008, narrowly defeating incumbent Republican Virgil Goode to represent Virginia's 5th District, an historically red district that Obama lost by 2.5 percent. Since then he has voted against the Democrats on a few high-profile issues -- he voted against Obama's budget -- but with them on the biggest ones: the stimulus bill, the health-care reform bill, and the American Clean Energy & Security Act (ACES), also known as the Waxman-Markey bill.

From: America's Quarterly

The Activist Politician

By

Tom Perriello

I belong to Generation X, which I think can be more accurately described as the Community Service Generation. We don’t sit on the sidelines. We have volunteered in record numbers and pioneered nonprofit organizations, using entrepreneurial savvy to solve our communities’ seemingly intractable problems. We took our talents directly into the schools and prisons.

But for years we did not vote.

We took from our grandparents in the Greatest Generation a call to serve, but we also came of age as then-U.S. President Ronald Reagan preached that government itself was part of the problem. We asked what we could do for our country, but we were not willing to put up with the slow pace and productivity level of the public sector. We wanted results now.

Nevertheless, as we got deeper into service and social entrepreneurship, we kept coming in contact with government. Sometimes it was the problem, sometimes the solution and sometimes the chance to translate a success into policy. After a decade, the community service generation was increasingly taking its experiences and results-oriented approach into public service.