Relating to Consideration of the Senate Amendment to H.R. Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2016

Floor Speech

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Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

I want to thank Ms. DeLauro, the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies.

Mr. Speaker, this is the story in The Washington Post. It is front page. It is about the crisis that we confront, about the danger to Americans' health, about the dangers that young children will be born with microcephaly.

Dr. Frieden, the head of our communicable disease operation and defense force, if you will, says it will cost $10 million per baby born with microcephaly; $10 million per child. That does not count the heartache that will be counted.

I want to tell my friend, Mr. Cole--and he is a dear friend and a good legislator--the action you take today belies the representation you have made.

What do I mean by that?

If there is enough money now, as Mr. Cole argues, why take this action?

This was not scheduled earlier this week. This was not have a rule until 9:30 last night. So if the gentleman's proposition is correct, that there are sufficient funds right now, we don't need to act on this bill today.

So why, my friends, are we acting on it today?

Because the public believes we ought to act. And the Republicans are trying to protect themselves against the attack, that they took no action until 94 days into the President's request because, if Mr. Cole is right, we need not worry: there is plenty of money available.

But they know the American people don't agree with that. So 9:30, in the dead of night, they passed this rule, brought it to the floor so that they can say: Oh, we have acted.

Nothing, my friends, will happen as a result of what we do today. The Senate passed a bill with 69 votes, $1.1 billion, not taking from Ebola defense, not taking from the other health needs of America, as our bill does, but saying: this is an emergency.

Now, very frankly, my friends on your side of the aisle, Mr. Cole, when you want $18 billion from defense, you have no problem not paying for it. You take it from OCO, which is not scored. No problem. But when the President asks for $1.9 billion, about a tenth of that, well, my goodness, this is a problem. It is, after all, not the Taliban. It is not Iran. We have to protect against that. It is a health crisis in America, and we have fiddled for 94 days.

If, in fact, Mr. Cole's representation is correct, there is no need to act. But if the actions that they are taking speak loudly that, yes, there is a need to tell the American people: we get it; there is a crisis; we are going to act, the problem is nothing will happen as a result of this action, other than a bill will go over to the Senate, with which the Senate does not agree. They passed a bill with 69 votes. Half of the Republicans, all of the Democrats, said we need the $1.1 billion.

Now, the President asked for $1.9 billion, but what they didn't do is steal from Ebola, steal from other health priorities.

And I hear the gentleman talking about how much money is out there, but if that is true, why did we need to act in the dead of night last night and today, just as we walk out the door?

We have not dealt with Zika. We will not have dealt with Zika.

We haven't acted on the Puerto Rican debt. We haven't acted on a budget resolution. We haven't acted on the Flint water crisis. We haven't acted on criminal justice reform. And we haven't acted on the Voting Rights Act.

This is a cover vote. Vote ``no.''

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