Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2016

Floor Speech

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Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, a home is more than just a roof over someone's head; it is actually where a family builds their lives. In our country, we need to do everything we can to make sure families have options when it comes to finding a place to live, and they need access to affordable, safe, and fair housing. Unfortunately, today Republicans want to deal a significant blow to fair housing. The amendment they are offering would tear down the civil rights protections in the Fair Housing Act of 1968, and I am here today to strongly urge my colleagues to vote against it.

Before the civil rights movement, African Americans faced an enormous amount of injustice and racism in housing. People of color were often relegated to substandard housing. They were denied mortgages, and rent in an African-American neighborhood was often higher than rent in a White neighborhood.

When the Fair Housing Act went into effect in 1968, it not only banned discrimination in the sale, rental, and financing of housing, it went a step further: A new Federal housing agency was charged with proactively rooting out discrimination and segregation in communities across the country. That is an important part of the law because today people across the country still face systemic and sometimes racially motivated barriers to housing. People with disabilities, people of color, families with children, and religious groups in many areas have limited housing choices.

Last year the Department of Housing and Urban Development, also known as HUD, issued a long-overdue rule to help carry out that mission to proactively eliminate housing segregation and discrimination. For States and local governments that get HUD investments, this rule would improve the quality and access to data on demographics, it would help researchers analyze the barriers people face to access fair housing, and it would help set priorities and goals for carrying out the mission to actively fight back against discrimination and segregation.

Based on pilot programs from around the country, we know this rule can help expand opportunity to more Americans. One of those pilots was in Seattle in my home State of Washington. After an assessment of high- poverty areas in Puget Sound, the city saw that neighborhoods that historically have been disenfranchised lacked job opportunities. Armed with that data, the city is setting up a food distribution center and a job incubator in those neighborhoods. The city's work is helping to foster job growth in places where low-income residents live, and through that work, the city expanded economic security to more people. That would not have been possible without the data this long-overdue rule provided us.

This is the kind of success this new rule will help further, but unfortunately we are seeing that some Republicans want to put a stop to those positive changes and backtrack on the gains we have made on civil rights in housing, and to me, that is unacceptable. Here in Congress, we should be clearing pathways for more Americans to access more housing, not blocking the away.

I am here today to urge my colleagues to vote against that amendment, which we will be voting on later.

Mr. President, while I have the floor, I wish to talk about another topic that is very important to me. I am very honored to come to the floor today with good news for thousands of military families, including three couples I met just last week here in the Nation's Capital. Each of the veterans I met with had suffered a catastrophic injury while fighting for our country, which changed the course of their lives and their families' lives forever.

Matt Keil was shot by a sniper and paralyzed. Kevin Jaye was injured by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan. Tyler Black was paralyzed during a firefight. What was the one thing each of these veterans wished for after he returned home and got out of the hospital? Well, like so many women and men in our country, they dreamed of having a family of their own.

Even though each veteran suffered injuries that made it nearly impossible to conceive naturally, they have hope because in this day and age, the medical technology exists to make their dream of having a family come true. The most popular path is in vitro fertilization, known as IVF, but because of a policy enacted decades ago, the VA is barred from covering the costs of IVF, which forced Matt, Kevin, and Tyler, with their partners, to go down that road alone even though their injuries were caused while serving all of us overseas. Collectively, they have paid tens and tens of thousands of dollars out- of-pocket. Matt said to me that when he heard the VA wouldn't cover the one medical procedure he and his wife wanted so badly, he felt like his country had abandoned him. We are talking about a man who sacrificed his body for our country.

I believe this is wrong. When this country sends brave men and women to work, we promise to take care of them when they return home. That is why I have been fighting to change this policy once and for all, and today I am very proud to see this effort take a big step forward with bipartisan support here in the Senate. My provision in the underlying VA appropriations bill will finally allow the VA to cover those costs and let our veterans know their country is there for them when they come home. It is the right thing to do for Matt and his wife Tracy, Kevin and Lauren, Tyler and Crystal, and every other military family in this country.

As we move to pass this bill through the Senate, I call on my colleagues in the House to follow suit and get this done. This is not about politics or partisanship, and we shouldn't be cutting corners when it comes to our veterans and their families. This is a chance to support our veterans and the dreams they have fought so hard for--to have a family.

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Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I am disappointed that Republicans refused to work with us to fully fund the President's emergency supplemental proposal, and it shouldn't have taken us so long to get to this point, but I am pleased that this will move us to a down payment on the President's emergency funding package through the Senate.

I want to commend Chairman Blunt for his work with us on this and all the Democrats and Republicans who are supporting it. But I want to remind all of us, this is only a first step, and we have to make sure that this agreement gets through the House and to the President's desk in the least amount of time.

I hope we can separate it from this bill and move it quickly. That was objected to yesterday over pay-fors, which are not part of this amendment, but this is a critical emergency. We need to move on this first step, and I hope we can do it in a timely manner.

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