Top Ten Abuses of the ``Select Investigative Panel'' Republicans

Floor Speech

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Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Mr. Speaker, yesterday 181 Democrats wrote to Speaker Ryan to ask the Republican Select Panel to Attack Women's Health--that is what we call it--to be shut down.

From the outset, this investigation has been a political weapon to punish women, doctors, and scientific researchers, not an objective, fair-minded, or fact-based search for the truth.

Here are the top 10 reasons to shut down this partisan panel immediately:

One: The select panel is a waste of taxpayer money.

Republicans are wasting taxpayer dollars in their chasing of inflammatory allegations of anti-abortion extremists.

Three Republican-led House committees, 12 States, and one grand jury have already investigated charges that Planned Parenthood was selling fetal tissue for a profit. None found any evidence of wrongdoing.

Two: The select panel is an attack on women's rights.

Republicans are using the panel as part of their campaign to deny women access to legal reproductive health services, including abortions--the panel comes at a time when Republicans have voted repeatedly to defund Planned Parenthood, which provides health services to over 3 million American women and men each year--to eliminate family planning services, and to restrict access to abortion.

Three: The select panel is harming scientific research.

Republicans are using the panel to intimidate scientists into stopping legal fetal tissue research on treatment for cures for diseases and conditions that afflict millions of Americans, including multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer's, diabetes, and spinal cord injuries. Some medical research outfits have already been canceled.

Four: The select panel is just partisan politics.

Republicans are conducting an unfair, one-sided, and partisan campaign. They refuse to put indicted video maker David Daleiden under oath, who made those highly edited tapes against Planned Parenthood, while issuing subpoenas and demanding sworn testimony from law-abiding researchers and doctors.

Republicans have suppressed facts that contradict their preferred partisan narratives. For example, they refused to hear directly from tissue procurement companies while they publicly accused them of misconduct based on misleading and inaccurate staff-created exhibits that lacked any sourcing or foundational information.

Five: The select panel is a McCarthy-like witch hunt:

Mirroring the bullying behavior of Senator Joe McCarthy, Republicans are demanding that universities and clinics name names of their researchers, graduate students, lab technicians, clinic personnel, and doctors. When Democrat Jerry Nadler asked Chair Blackburn to explain why she needs to amass this database of names, she responded: No, sir. I am not going to do that.

Six: The select panel threatens innocent lives.

Republicans are putting researchers and doctors at risk by publicly naming them as targets of their investigation and creating a database of names.

On May 11, Republicans issued a press release that publicly named a physician who had already been the target and the subject of violence by anti-abortion extremists. That physician was never contacted to voluntarily provide information before he received a subpoena.

Seven: The select panel is dangerous.

Republicans are refusing to protect confidentiality despite known risks and tragedies, such as the murders of three people at the Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood women's health clinic. That murderer echoed the words of our Republican chairman of the select committee.

The killer used words like ``no more baby body parts.'' Even after they promised to protect confidentiality, the committee said: We will not assure that witnesses' names or any of the other names used in the deposition will remain private.

Eight: The select panel is an abuse of power.

Republicans are abusing congressional subpoena power. The overwhelming majority of their unilateral subpoenas--30 of 36--have been sent without any effort to obtain voluntary compliance.

We should provide physicians, medical researchers, and others with an opportunity for them to provide information voluntarily. A subpoena should not be the first contact they have with Congress.

Nine: The select panel excludes Democrats.

Republicans have consistently refused to work with Democratic panel members. They have refused to discuss or to even give Democrats copies of their unilateral subpoenas until after they have been served, which is in violation of the House.

Ten: The select panel bullies witnesses they don't like.

It is time, Mr. Speaker, to end this panel right now.

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