Missing and exploited children In the spring of 1997, 12-year-old Laura Kate Smither of Friendswood, Texas, was abducted while she was out jogging. Despite efforts by the community and law enforcement her body was found two and a half weeks later. The devastation felt by the Smither family and the determination of the volunteers inspired Lampson to establish the first-ever
United States House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children. Its purpose is to raise awareness of missing and exploited children matters, develop legislation, and support policies that protect children from abduction, exploitation, and abuse. The caucus has played a significant role in promoting the welfare of children and has worked on various initiatives to strengthen child protection laws, improve law enforcement efforts in cases involving missing and exploited children, and provide support and resources to the families of victims. Caucus members pushed through passage of legislation including the Protection of Children From Sexual Predators Act of 1998, Child Abuse Prevention and Enforcement Act of 2000,
AMBER Alert System,
Code Adam Act, Protecting Our Children Comes First Act of 2007, and the
Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act. It became the largest bi-partisan, issue-based caucus in the House and inspired the creation of an
identical caucus in the Senate. Lampson authored the Protecting Our Children Comes First Act of 2007. It passed the House and Senate. It was signed into law by President Bush on June 3, 2008. He introduced and passed the SAFE Act of 2007 in the House. Its intent was to amend the federal criminal code to expand the reporting requirements with respect to violations of laws prohibiting sexual exploitation of children and child pornography. It died in the Senate. Provisions of the bill were adopted in the PROTECT Our Children Act of 2008 and signed into law. Lampson worked closely with the
National Center for Missing & Exploited Children and became known as a tireless advocate for their interests on Capitol Hill.
Transportation and infrastructure Lampson won support for numerous projects benefiting Southeast Texas, including the Neches River Salt Water Barrier, funding for improving areas of the
Gulf Intracoastal Waterway, port upgrades, and coastal and beach improvement projects. Other notable projects that he secured federal funding for include the
Galveston Causeway,
Galveston Island Trolley expansion,
NASA 1 Bypass Freeway, and major renovations to the
Ellington Field Joint Reserve Base's fire station. He co-sponsored the
Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century. The landmark legislation affirmed President Clinton's key priorities: improving safety, protecting public health and the environment, and creating opportunity for all Americans. Following the
September 11 attacks, Lampson played a key role in passing Aviation Security legislation as a member of the Subcommittee on Aviation including the
Aviation and Transportation Security Act. The bill created a new
Transportation Security Administration. He voted for the
Maritime Transportation Antiterrorism Act. He co-sponsored the Pipeline Safety Improvement Act of 2002
. Lampson included language in the
U.S. Troop Readiness, Veterans' Care, Katrina Recovery, and Iraq Accountability Appropriations Act of 2007 waiving the local funding match required under the
Stafford Act. It passed unanimously through the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, and allowed Texas communities to qualify for disaster assistance programs, providing a savings to the State of Texas totaling upwards of $40 million.
NASA, the Johnson Space Center, and Human Space Flight Lampson's congressional district included the
Johnson Space Center in
Houston, Texas. He established a reputation as a vocal advocate of the
International Space Station, human space flights, and increased federal funding in support of
NASA. In 2002 and 2003, he introduced the Space Exploration Act, a bill to establish long-term goals for NASA and the nation's space program. This bill was largely adopted as policy by the Bush Administration in 2004. In 2007, he secured more than $300 million in additional federal funding for NASA. In 2008, twelve house members led by Lampson successfully urged House leaders to add $2 billion to NASA's budget in The National Aeronautics and Space Administration Authorization Act of 2008. The total budget was $20.2 billion. The additional funding allowed for a Space Shuttle flight to deliver the
Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer to the International Space Station. The project measures antimatter in cosmic rays and searches for evidence of dark matter.
Samuel C. Ting, Nobel prize winning physicist, is the lead researcher on the project. The budget increase also accelerated the development of the
Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) and
Ares I Crew Launch Vehicle (CLV), which would replace the
Space Shuttle. Additional legislation supported by Lampson includes the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Authorization Act of 2000, the Commercial Space Transportation Competitiveness Act of 2000, the NASA Flexibility Act of 2004, the U.S. Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act of 2004, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Authorization Act of 2008. He introduced the Amendment to the Iran Nonproliferation Act of 2003, seeking to allow NASA to help Russia purchase additional
Soyuz and Progress vehicles if the President notifies Congress they are needed to ensure the safety of the crew aboard the International Space Station and to maintain its operational viability while the Space Shuttle fleet is grounded; it influenced the Bush administration's policy and led to passage of the Iran Nonproliferation Amendments Act of 2005. Lampson was instrumental in passage of the U.S. Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act of 2004. It provided guidelines for regulating the safety of commercial human spaceflight in the United States under the oversight of the
Federal Aviation Administration. It also paved the way for commercial space tourism. The bill's author, Congressman
Dana Rohrabacher, credited Lampson among two other colleagues for being able to get this legislation passed.
Foreign affairs and travel Lampson participated in the
NATO Parliamentary Assembly and served as chairman of the Congressional Study Group on Germany, an inter-parliamentary assembly between the
German Bundestag and the
U.S. House of Representatives. He was involved in the effort to expand NATO to include all of the Baltic States following the dissolution of the
USSR. Traveling to each of the countries, he served as a delegate to help determine their membership eligibility. The abduction of American children by a non-custodial parent and failure of countries such as Germany in honoring
The Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction was an issue pressed by Lampson. He authored a concurrent resolution agreed to in the House and Senate calling on allied nations to "comply fully with both the letter and the spirit of their international legal obligations under the Convention to ensure their compliance to honor their commitments and return wrongfully abducted children to their place of habitual residence, and ensure parental access rights by removing obstacles to the exercise of those rights." Germany re-evaluated their non-compliance and put in place additional measures to honor the enforcement of international treaties compelling them to intervene in the return of abducted children to their country of origin. Lampson was a member of the Cuba Working Group and a proponent of lifting trade embargoes. He co-sponsored the Cuban Food and Medicine Security Act of 1999, Bridges to the Cuban People Act of 2001, Freedom to Travel to Cuba Act of 2002, Export Freedom to Cuba Act of 2003, Bridges to the Cuban People Act of 2003, and Agricultural Export Facilitation Act of 2007. In 1999, he traveled to Cuba with Southeast Texas rice farmers to meet President
Fidel Castro and his government in an attempt to call for renewed agricultural trade between the United States and Cuba. Before a 1960s trade embargo, Cuba imported virtually all of its rice from the U.S. The members of the delegation played a major role in getting a landmark law signed by President Clinton the very next year: the
Trade Sanctions Reform and Export Enhancement Act of 2000. For the first time in decades, it opened the door to modest trade with Cuba. As of 2016, that law has led to more than $5 billion in American exports to Cuba. In 2002, Lampson helped facilitate a deal to allow 30,000 metric tons of grain to be shipped to Cuba from the Port of Galveston for the first time in forty years. In 2003, he traveled to Germany as part of a congressional delegation meeting with the German Bundestag. Part of the trip included a stop at
Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, where he visited with wounded U.S. servicemen and women. In 2008, he traveled to Afghanistan, Pakistan and India with Senator
Ben Nelson, Congressman
Allen Boyd, and Congressman
Tim Mahoney. They met with Afghan President
Hamid Karzai and Pakistani President
Pervez Musharraf == Political positions ==