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Fighting For Lower Taxes

• Helped pass 30 different tax relief bills in the past few years

• Increase the Child tax credit to $1000

• Reduce Marginal Tax rates

• Reduce the Marriage Penalty tax

• Eliminated the Death Tax

• Introduced legislation to provide families a tax credit of $4500 to offset the cost of tuition of non-public schools

• Introduced legislation to stop middle class Americans - such as a police officer and a nurse - from having to pay the Alternative Minimum Tax

• Opposed and helped defeat President Bush's to eliminated the deduction for mortgage interest and state and local taxes saving the average Staten Island or Brooklyn Family about $5000 a year

Health Care

• Voted twice to help pass legislation to expand funding for stem-cell research to help find a cure for diseases such as Diabetes, Alzheimer's, and Parkinson's.

• Secured $150,000 in federal funding to establish a new Primary/Urgent Care clinic in Stapleton

• Led the fight against the proposal to close the Brooklyn VA hospital that provides health care services to Staten Island and Brooklyn veterans. 

• Helped enact a voluntary, permanent and affordable Medicare Prescription Plan that guarantees for the first time in American history, that every senior citizen will have access to prescription drug coverage.

• Supports a Bipartisan Commission to save Social Security, but would NOT support any plan that includes personal accounts, progressive indexing or a real reduction in benefits for seniors and baby-boomers.

• Helped enact a voluntary, permanent & affordable Medicare Prescription Drug plan that guarantees for the first time in American history, that every senior citizen will have access to prescription drug coverage.

• Supports efforts to simplify the Medicare drug program , increase flexibility so seniors can change plans and streamline waiver process so seniors can have greater access to the medications they need.

• Opposes and helped lead the fight against a Bush Administration proposal that would have cut $65 billion in Medicare and Medicaid.

• Supported a Patient's Bill of Rights that would have created safeguards to hold HMO's accountable for their decisions, give patients the right to pick their own doctor and provide direct access to specialty medical care Dedicated $2.5 trillion to strengthen social security to guarantee that every senior will receive his or her full benefits.

• Secured $300,000 in federal funding to expand the emergency rooms at Staten Island University Hospital and Victory Memorial Hospital to reduce wait times and enhance the level of care.

Improving Our Schools

• Introduced legislation to provide families a tax credit of $4500 to offset the cost of tuition of non-public schools.

• Voted for historic levels of federal funding - more than $57 billion last year alone -- for public education.  An increase of 150% over the last decade.

• Supported the Reading First Initiative, which represents the single greatest effort in American history to ensure every child masters the skill of reading by the 3rd grade.  Dedicated more than $1 billion for the program.

Protecting the Homeland

• Within weeks of 9-11 Vito helped secure more than $21 Billion for NYC to dramatically increase security and rebuild lower Manhattan, including rebuilding the South Ferry subway station.

• Since 2002 Congressman Fossella helped secure more than $100 million dollars in Homeland Security Funding for NYC to protect residents from future terrorist attacks and to better equip and train our first responders.

• Opposed the White House's effort to rescind $125 million in 9/11 funding for New York City – and then secured the agreement from House leaders to restore the money, which will provide monitoring and treatment for sick and injured first responders.

• Teamed up with Democratic Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney to convince the federal government to appoint a health coordinator to address the health impacts of September 11th.

• Wrote the bill to end pork-barrel distribution of homeland security and bioterrorism funding, which would send hundreds of millions of additional dollars to New York City.

• Scored a big victory by convincing the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to direct millions of addition dollars in bioterrorism funding to New York City.

• Potentially saved hundreds of millions of dollars in homeland security funding from being diverted to other states by stripping anti-New York language from the Homeland Security Appropriations bill.

Improving Staten Island and Brooklyn

• Led the successful fight to keep the Fort Hamilton military installation open during the recent Pentagon base closure review.

• Worked with Councilman Lanza to secure the commitment from Mayor Bloomberg to establish a Transportation Task Force that was charged with developing a "Marshall Plan" to improve traffic on Staten Island.

• Secured $10 million in federal funding and helped secure the historic agreement to build a new bus depot on Staten Island, paving the way for an expansion of bus service across the borough.

• Helped deliver more than $1 billion in improvements for Ferry riders, including $20 million for the Whitehall & St. George Terminals, $33 million for three new boats and $420 million for a new South Ferry train station.

• Secured agreement for a major study of creating contraflow lanes on Hylan Blvd. to ease congestion.

• Secured $6 million in federal funding for long-sought improvements to the 86th Street Subway station.

• Secured agreement from the City Dept. of Transportation to conduct a study on Colonial Road in Bay Ridge to enhance safety along an 11-block stretch running from 75th Street to 86th Street.

• Secured $350,000 in federal funding to create high-speed EZ Pass lanes on the Outerbridge Crossing. Joined with the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) to call for new contraflow lanes on the Staten Island Xway and expanding existing ones on the Gowanus Xway.