Restoring Americans' Healthcare Freedom Reconciliation Act of 2015

Floor Speech

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Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I want to note that right at this moment there are Senators of this esteemed body who are doing something that is not so esteemed. They are working to put into some of the must-pass legislation that we will be considering today and in the days to come something known as the DARK Act. The DARK Act is the Deny Americans the Right to Know Act. It takes away the ability of States to make sure the citizens of their State have the knowledge they would like to have about the food they eat.

We have seen in the toxics discussion in the Senate how important it is to individual States to have the ability to identify for their citizens what is in the everyday household products they have: their spoons, their plates, their bedding, and so forth--but it is much more important. It is an order of magnitude more important to citizens to have the right at the State level to decide how to inform individuals about what is in the food they eat.

This proposal to put the DARK Act--taking away the rights of the States, taking away the rights of citizens to use their democracy to be able to know what is in the food they eat--is being proposed to be put into a bill in the dark of night. The DARK Act should never go into legislation in this Senate. It should never be considered airdropped in, in the dark of night, into must-pass legislation. It should be debated openly in committee, thoroughly vetted, thoroughly considered, because that certainly is the type of consideration merited by an issue so fundamental to citizens as knowledge about the food they eat and the food their children eat.

Let us not, as a Senate, commit such a disgraceful act as taking away the State right and the individual desire to have knowledge about the fundamental food that we consume. Let us not have that airdropped in the dark of night. That would be a huge mistake.

I yield the floor.

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