Prohibiting Federal Funding of Planned Parenthood Federation of America--Motion to Proceed

Floor Speech

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Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, later this week we are going to have our first Republican Presidential debate, the official one that is on TV, and a lot of people are going to be watching. There has been a lot of speculation as to who is going to be in the debate, who is not going to be in the debate, who will do well, who will not, who will rise in the polls, and who will fall in the polls.

Frankly, we don't need to wait for that debate because the Republican Presidential primary campaign is playing out right now on the floor of the Senate, I think, to the detriment of the institution. How else would you explain a threat from Members of this body and frankly from Members of the House--many of whom are not running for President--to shut down the government over the issue of funding for Planned Parenthood. We have been through this before. We have been through government shutdowns prompted by ideological politics before, and a lot of people got hurt--a lot of people got hurt.

The life of a woman in Bridgeport, CT, was torn apart because her Head Start Program was shut down because of the Federal Government shutdown. She was just beginning a new job, and she had to make a new choice between continuing in this new place of employment that was going to lift her out of poverty, essentially sending her kids out on the street while they didn't have care, or leaving the job and taking care of her kids while Head Start was shut down. Those are the consequences of a government shutdown.

So if you are going to shut down the government, your reason for doing it better be pretty good. The reason a
couple of years ago was a miserable one--taking health care away from millions of Americans who are getting it because of the Affordable Care Act.

But this one is just as insidious. I don't know where women in my State would be without Planned Parenthood. My wife is one of tens of thousands--probably hundreds of thousands--of Connecticut women who got their preventative care from Planned Parenthood. She did that when she was young, didn't have a lot of income, and needed to find a primary care provider who could get her access to basic health care services. There are 2.7 million patients all across the country who receive their health care, their preventative health care, from Planned Parenthood.

More than 90 percent of what Planned Parenthood does all across the country is engage in preventive health care.

In 2013, 400,000 Pap tests, 500,000 breast exams, 4.5 million STI tests and treatments, including HIV tests. In Connecticut, there are 17 Planned Parenthood centers and they serve--here is the number--64,000 patients in the State of Connecticut.

So we are going to shut down the government in order to take health care away from 64,000 women in Connecticut, all in order for a handful of people to make an ideological point that may get some additional votes within a Republican Presidential primary, despite the fact that since the 1980s the law in this country has been clear: You can't use Federal dollars for abortions.

I oppose that law because I believe abortions are part of a panoply of medical services that should be available to people in this country at their choice. Frankly, I think the government should stay out of the business of deciding what medically necessary health care choices women can make. I don't think we should be involved in that. So I don't actually support the underlying law that prevents those dollars from being used, but it is the law of the land, it has been the law of the land, and it will be the law of the land.

We are saying we are going to shut down access to 64,000 women in Connecticut because the place they are getting health care also performs a health care service that is objectionable to people who are running for President, but let us take that logic to its natural extrapolation. Let's take it to its logical end point. If you believe no one should be eligible to get health care services from any institution that has anything to do with abortions or the full array of reproductive health care services, then you can't actually stop at Planned Parenthood. You have to stop funding any hospital that has anything to do with offering a full array of health care services. You have to stop funding for health care centers that do the same.

Why wouldn't you stop sending Medicaid dollars to States such as Connecticut that have codified Roe v. Wade? What is the logical end to this policy if all of a sudden an organization that spends 90-plus percent of its resources simply engaging in the good stuff of preventive health care now all of a sudden can't serve anybody because they engage in a service that is a politically hot topic in Congress, despite the fact that there is a law on the books that says they can't use any of their Federal dollars for that particular service.

Take this to its logical end, and we cut off Federal funding for not 64,000 patients in Connecticut but virtually every patient in Connecticut if any association with the provision of abortions all of a sudden denies you Federal funding. I don't concede the fact that the Hyde amendment is the law of the land, but I acknowledge that it is and it will be.

This is just Presidential Republican primary politics finding its way onto the Senate floor. What this could lead to is not the defunding of Planned Parenthood, because they will not get the votes nor the Presidential signature to defund one of the most important primary and preventive health care providers in our States--I will not do that. I will not deny health care to 64,000 Connecticut women. So all they do by creating this line in the sand, once again, is shut down the Federal Government, sucking thousands of jobs out of our economy, leading to tens of thousands of stories of individual misery, such as the woman from Bridgeport who all of a sudden awoke to find her kid couldn't go to his Head Start Program and so she had to think about quitting her new job in order to take care of her child.

I get it that threats about shutdowns make good headlines. They play to a slice of a Presidential primary electorate, but they are big headaches for real people. We are not playing with politics when we talk about shutting down the government over defunding Planned Parenthood or over repealing the Affordable Care Act. We are playing with people's lives.

So I hope this is just the issue of the week in the Republican Presidential primary. I hope when we come back in September we are not seriously talking about another government shutdown. I hope we seriously are not talking about an attack on women's health care all across this country. I hope we are not entertaining the idea that tens of thousands of women in my State are all of a sudden going to lose access to services or tens of thousands of women and men are going to lose access to programs such as Head Start, job training, and all the other things that get affected when the government shuts down.

I am sick of shutdowns. I have only been in the Congress for less than a decade, and I have been through more of them, real and threatened, than I care to remember. I am certainly not going to stand for a shutdown threatened on the basis of denying health care to women in the State of Connecticut or anywhere else across this country.

I hope we can spend some time after this vote next week--that even my Republican friends in the Republican Presidential primary will admit is a showboat--and get down to the real business of passing a budget that respects the values and priorities of this country, that keeps our government operational, and separates, to the best we can, the business we do on the Senate floor from the business of sorting out who is going to be the next Republican nominee for President.

I yield the floor.

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