Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2016--Conference Report
Floor Speech
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Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I enter a motion to reconsider the vote.
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Mr. McCONNELL. until 2:15 p.m. to allow for the weekly caucus meetings.
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Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, here is where we are. We have a public health crisis descending on our country. We have been talking about this for 3 months. The administration and the CDC--all involved--said we need to get this Zika funding bill done before the Fourth of July-- before the Fourth of July. This conference report, which was just prevented from passage, has exactly the same funding level that every single Democrat voted for when it left the Senate--exactly the same funding level.
We know that if we don't get this job done, we won't have a vaccine within a year and a half. In the short term, we have been told that the single most effective thing we can do is kill as many mosquitoes as possible as fast as possible right here in the United States, in the southern part of our country.
So here we are in an utterly absurd position of playing political games as this public health crisis mounts here in our country. Pregnant women all across America are looking at this with utter dismay, as we sit here in a partisan gridlock manufactured by the other side over issues that it is pretty hard for the general public to understand, refusing to pass the funds needed to address this public health concern.
If that were not bad enough, we have also stopped the passage of the MILCON-Veterans' Administration appropriations conference report, which includes funding for our veterans and funding for construction at military bases.
So here we are going into the Fourth of July and we have impeded the passage of funding to deal with an impending public health crisis and in the same vote managed to vote against veterans as well. I would say to my colleagues on the other side, that is where we will be when we come back here after this brief break for the Fourth of July. I have moved to reconsider. I have changed my vote and moved to reconsider. I would like to call on my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to think about this, to think about where they have left this issue for the American people. I have been approached in my State--and I know others have as well--by young women concerned about whether we are going to address this issue now, not at some time in the future.
So when we get back, after we have had time to think about it all, we will address this matter again and hopefully respond, as our constituents all across America are asking us to respond, to this pending health care crisis that we all understand. There has been plenty of discussion about this for months. This Republican majority has met the deadline, but we can't pass it by ourselves here in the Senate. I hope our Democratic friends, upon reflection over the course of the few days we will be away, will come back with a different attitude, and I hope we can address this crisis and address it now.
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