Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies

Floor Speech

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Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I thank the Chair. Unanimous Consent Request--H.R. 3038

I have to say that I am really disappointed that Republicans once again rejected the administration's full emergency supplemental package.

It has been more than 3 months since President Obama first put forward a proposal to fight this Zika virus. He laid out what he thought he needed to respond to a crisis in a way that protected our families the best. His administration was here. They testified at hearing after hearing after hearing about the details of this proposal and made it clear that there was absolutely no reason for Congress to wait.

But, for months, our Republican leaders did nothing. They delayed. They came up with one excuse after another. They ignored the experts, ignored the scientists, and ignored the facts.

Some Republicans were saying that Zika wasn't something they were willing to give the administration a penny more for. Others said they would think about more money to fight Zika but only in return for partisan spending cuts. And others spent more time thinking about how to get political cover rather than actually trying to address this enormous problem.

But many of us knew how important this was, and we were not going to give up. We kept the pressure on. We kept pushing to get serious about dealing with this emergency, and we made sure that the mothers and fathers across the country who are scared and who wanted their government to fight this horrific virus had a voice in this process.

So while it shouldn't have taken so long, I am glad that this week many of our Republican colleagues in the Senate did finally join us at the table to open up a path for an important step forward. This was a compromise proposal, and it certainly isn't what I would have written on my own.

For example, I want to note that throughout this process, I have made it clear that a top priority of mine is making sure that women do have access to reproductive health care in light of the impacts of this virus. So I was disappointed that the Republicans insisted on including unnecessary language that simply reiterates the preexisting ban on Federal funding for abortions.

But this bipartisan agreement that we voted on yesterday would support community health centers and other providers in making sure that women have access to contraception and other critical health care. It would help make sure that women in Zika-affected areas have the ability to plan their families and prevent these tragedies, like so many we have already seen, especially compared to the House legislation that includes no support for preventive health care or outreach for family planning. I believe these resources are extremely critical, and I am going to keep fighting to continue getting us to expand this to the full range of reproductive health care that women need.

We also didn't get the full amount we had hoped for in this compromise. Democrats still believe that Congress should give the President the full funding this administration has asked for and needs.

But I am glad that, with every Democrat and 23 Republicans willing to do the right thing, we are going to pass a $1.1 billion down payment on the President's proposal and do it as an emergency bill without offsets--the way it ought to be.

So I want to thank Senator Blunt, who worked with me to get this done, as well as my colleagues on both sides of the aisle who voted for it. Our bipartisan agreement will provide direct investments with a Zika response in Puerto Rico. It will ramp up prevention and support services for pregnant women and invest in foreign aid for Latin America and the Caribbean. It will help accelerate development of a vaccine and backfill nearly $100 million in funding the administration was forced to reprogram due to the Republicans' refusal to act.

Our agreement would accelerate the administration's work and allow money to start flowing to address this crisis, even as we continue to ask for more as needed.

Unfortunately, now we know that House Republicans have gone in a very different direction. They released an underfunded, partisan--and, frankly, in my opinion--mean-spirited bill that would provide only $622 million, which is less than a third of what is needed for this emergency, without any funding for preventive health care or family planning or even outreach to those who are at risk of getting the Zika virus.

They are still insisting that funding for this public health emergency be fully offset and that the administration should siphon the money away from the critical Ebola response and from other essential activities in order to fund Zika efforts.

The choice between the Senate and the House Zika bills is a choice between acting to protect women and families and doing nothing at all. It is a choice between a bipartisan compromise that takes an important step forward to address this emergency and a partisan embarrassment that is intended to do nothing more than provide Members with political cover. That doesn't solve this emergency.

The partisan House bill is a nonstarter, but we do have a path forward. The Senate bill has the support of Democrats and Republicans. It can move through the House, it can be signed into law, and it can get resources moving quickly to tackle this emergency quickly.

So let's get this bill to the House as quickly as possible. Every Democrat and a little less than half of the Republicans supported the bill. Let's send it to the House right now and urge them to pass it as quickly as possible.

There is no reason to keep it attached to this bill we are on and allow House Republicans to get it and slow-walk it into the fall, as our leader suggested would happen. There is no reason this funding cannot be approved and signed into law next week in time for the summer and the peak of mosquito season, which the Senator from Florida knows is coming very rapidly.

It has the support of the Senate on its own. Let's send it to the House on its own. Women and families in this country have been looking to Congress for action on Zika for months, and we here in the Senate-- and House Republicans--should not make them wait any longer.

157, H.R. 3038; that all after the enacting clause be stricken; that the Blunt-Murray substitute amendment to enhance the Federal response and preparedness with respect to the Zika virus be agreed to; that there be up to 1 hour of debate, equally divided between the two leaders or their designees; that upon the use or yielding back of time, the bill, as amended, be read a third time and the Senate vote on passage of the bill, as amended, with no intervening action or debate.

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Mrs. MURRAY. The Zika virus isn't going to wait for the winter months. The mosquitoes are here now, and they will continue to move very rapidly across the country, as our leader has outlined before. So taking it out of this bill--it has now been approved by a number of Senators on a bipartisan basis--and moving it quickly to the House and getting it to the President's desk means they will have the resources as quickly as possible to deal with this and to begin to deal with this in a responsible way.

Secondly, let me just say that the request that the Senator from Texas has just broached means that we are going to have to fight over cuts--cuts to women, cuts to families, cuts to critical health care efforts in order to fight the Zika virus. That is objectionable. This is an emergency supplemental, as we agreed to yesterday, and it needs to move forward that way.
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Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I believe that real long-term economic growth is built from the middle out, not from the top down, and our government and our economy and our workplaces should work for all of our families, not just the wealthiest few.

Across the country today, millions of workers are working harder than ever without basic overtime protection. That is why I am very proud to come to the floor today to express my strong support for the new overtime rule to help millions of workers and families in our country.

Back in 1938, Congress recognized the need for overtime pay. Without overtime protection, corporations were able to exploit workers' time to increase their profits. So the Fair Labor Standards Act set up a standard 40-hour workweek. By law, when workers put in more than 40 hours, their employers had to compensate them fairly with time-and-a- half pay. But those protections have eroded over the past several decades.

In today's economy, many Americans feel as if they are working more and more for less and less pay, and in many cases, they are. Right now, if a salaried worker earns just a little more than $23,000 a year, he or she is not guaranteed time-and-a-half pay. That salary threshold is much too low. In fact, it is less than the poverty level for a family of four.

Workers should not have to earn poverty wages to get guaranteed overtime protection. It is clear that overtime rules in this country are severely out of date. Consider this: Back in the mid-1970s, 62 percent of salaried workers had guaranteed overtime pay. Today, just 7 percent of salaried workers have that protection. Big corporations use these outdated overtime rules to their advantage. They force their employees to work overtime without paying them the fair time-and-a-half pay. That might be good for a big corporation's profit, but it is a detriment to a working family's economic security.

Today, the Department of Labor has issued a final rule to raise the salary threshold from about $23,000 to just over $47,000 a year. That will restore protections for millions of Americans, and it is especially important, by the way, for a parent. Think about what it would mean for a working mom, who right now works overtime and doesn't get paid for it. By restoring this basic worker protection, she could finally work a 40-hour week and spend more time with her kids or, if her employer asks her to work more than 40 hours a week, she would have more money in her pocket to boost her family's economic security.

That is why this is so important for our struggling middle class. When workers put in more than 40 hours a week on the job, they should be paid fairly for it. That is the bottom line.

I have heard from some of my Republican colleagues who don't want to update these overtime rules. If you listen closely, it sounds as though they are trying to argue that businesses in this country can't operate unless they are able to exploit workers' time and refuse them overtime pay.

Well, Democrats fundamentally disagree. In fact, when workers have economic security, when they are able to make ends meet and succeed, businesses succeed, our economy succeeds. That virtuous cycle is part of what makes America great.

If Republicans want to take away these basic worker protections, they will have to answer to millions of hardworking Americans putting in overtime without receiving a dime of extra pay. They can try, but I know that I and many others are going to be right here fighting back for the workers and families we represent--families like Meryle's from Bellingham, WA. She said that early in her career she worked low-wage jobs and oftentimes her overtime hours went unpaid.

When Meryle heard about the Obama administration updating overtime protections, she wrote in to comment on that new rule. She said those unpaid overtime hours hurt her pocketbook, but she said she lost more than money. She was working overtime without being paid fairly for it on top of missing out on important time with her daughter.

Boosting wages and expanding economic stability and security is good for our families, and it is good for our economy. By the way, that is exactly what we should be focused on here in Congress to help build our economy from the middle out, not the top down.

For workers who want fair pay for a day's work, for the parents--like Meryle--who have sacrificed family time for overtime and not seen a dime in extra pay, for families who are looking for some much needed economic security, I urge all of my colleagues to support restoring these important overtime protections.

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