Many Iowans practice a traditional ritual at the start of a New Year. Setting financial, professional, lifestyle, and healthy diet and exercise benchmarks are common personal enrichment goals at the beginning of the calendar year.

With the first half of the 108th Congress wrapped up at the end of 2003, the New Year also provides a good time to take stock of finished and unfinished legislative business.

In the last 12 months, the Republican-led Congress continued a strong commitment to beef up America’s national security both abroad and on the home front. Congress approved $87.5 billion to support U.S. military troops and reconstruction efforts in Iraq.

As chairman of the tax-writing Senate Finance Committee, I helped steer through a jobs and growth package engineered to boost America’s economic recovery. The $350 billion measure included $20 billion in state assistance to help state and local governments pay for homeland security and other essential services. Iowa will net nearly $180 million over the next two years. Families, individual investors and small business owners benefited from expanded and accelerated tax rate reductions and other tax incentives designed to create jobs.

After years of campaigning on the issue, Congress passed an historic expansion of the Medicare insurance program that includes a first-ever prescription drug benefit for 40 million older and disabled Americans. As the chief Senate architect of the Medicare bill, I won a major funding boost of $579 million to improve Iowa’s health care delivery system over the next decade.

Despite these accomplishments, plenty of work remains. From my key committee assignments in the U.S. Senate, I’ll continue advancing public policies to help improve economic, energy, retirement and health security for Iowans.

First, Congress will reconvene on Jan. 20 and finalize a catch-all spending bill that funds key government services through September, from agriculture, to education, housing, veterans, transportation and federal law enforcement programs.

Here’s a snapshot of other unfinished business that will keep me busy in 2004:

• Green Energy America must curb its dangerous reliance on foreign sources of energy. It has a destabilizing affect on the U.S. economy. That’s why I’m continuing my full-court press to break the logjam in the Senate that’s preventing a comprehensive energy bill from reaching the president’s desk. The bill includes my 'green energy' package that would boost America’s energy independence, enhance economic development in rural America and increase consumption of clean-burning, home-grown energy, including ethanol, biodiesel, wind, and biomass.

• Corporate Governance Corporate greed and misconduct has shaken investor confidence and exposed loopholes in the U.S. tax code. I’m working aggressively on measures to help restore investor confidence and force corporate America to come clean, including legislation that would end abusive tax shelters and tax evasion schemes.

• Pension Protections. Americans in the workforce deserve certainty and economic certainty once they reach retirement. I’m advancing legislation that would help avert another Enron-like crisis and empower workers to safeguard their retirement security.

• Jobs Although most economic indicators show continued growth in 2004, unemployment continues to cause anxiety among U.S. workers, especially in the manufacturing sector. I’m advancing the JOBS Act to help revive American manufacturing and fix flaws in our international tax rules that undermine U.S. employer’s ability to compete in the global marketplace.

• American agriculture. Increased concentration in American agriculture puts small and mid-sized family farms at an unfair disadvantage. I’ll continue my long-standing effort to limit federal farm payments that currently pay out two-thirds of the benefits to 10 percent of the largest farming units in the United States My other ag priorities include curbing packer ownership of livestock, reinstating the original timeline for implementation of my country-of-origin labeling law by Sept. 30 and working to ensure necessary safeguards are in place to protect the safety of the U.S. food supply. The long-term economic prosperity of family farmers rests on maintaining the confidence of American consumers and our international trading partners.