National Sea Grant College Program Amendments Act of 2015--Continued

Floor Speech

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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, about 24 hours ago our Democratic friends filibustered an appropriations bill for $1.1 billion that they themselves had said was an emergency, denying mothers pregnant with babies potentially like this one depicted here from suffering the devastating birth defects associated with microcephaly. You can see the shrunken skull associated with a shrunken brain--a devastating impact. This is the principal danger of the Zika virus, which heretofore had been limited to South America and Central America, places like Puerto Rico, sadly, and Haiti. The mosquito that carries this virus is native to Texas, Louisiana, Florida, and the southern most parts of the United States. So far the only cases--save one recently in Florida--of infection from the Zika virus have been from people who traveled to those regions and then returned to the United States. As I said, it appears there has been one reported case in Florida that has been contracted on the mainland of the United States.

I simply do not understand how the Democratic leader from Nevada and his colleagues could turn this public health crisis into a political circus. When a pregnant woman contracts Zika, it can cause microcephaly like this. Of course, you can imagine, even if you are just a woman of childbearing age, the possibility that you might contract Zika--not knowing how long that virus remains in your body--would cause tremendous anxiety. You can imagine what this devastating birth defect does not only to the baby involved but to the families who must necessarily support them.

This condition is tragic. It can cause seizures, intellectual disabilities, hearing and vision problems, and developmental delays, and of course a premature death. That is the kind of life that awaits these children and the families of children born with microcephaly if they are fortunate enough to survive. As I mentioned yesterday, it was reported that a child with microcephaly was born in Florida. In this case, I stand corrected. That was not as a result of a mosquito bite in the United States, but rather the mother contracted the virus while in Haiti and traveled back to her home in Florida.

The simple point is, this is playing with fire. It was just a few weeks ago, actually May 23, 2016, when the Democratic leader insisted we immediately fund the President's request of $1.9 billion in emergency funding. He said:

Instead of gambling with the health and safety of millions of Americans, Republicans should give our Nation the money it needs to fight Zika and they should do it now. Not next month, not in the fall--now.

I think the urgency Senator Reid was expressing was felt by all of us, but we know there is a right way and a wrong way to appropriate money in the U.S. Congress. We have to pass legislation in the Senate, we have to pass legislation in the House, and then we have to come together in a conference committee to reconcile those differences. It is the conference report that is the product of a negotiation between the House and the Senate that funded this effort at the level that actually passed the Senate just a few short weeks ago. Every single one of our Democratic friends voted for funding the Zika crisis at $1.1 billion. Yet yesterday, all but I believe one of our Democratic colleagues then voted against the very funding they said was an emergency back at the end of May.

We know given the warmer weather in the southernmost part of the United States and the fact that the mosquito that carries this virus is native to the southern part of the United States--we know this risk is on our doorstep, and it is really shameful our Democratic colleagues put politics ahead of sound public policy.

Here are some of the excuses they gave, and none of them withstand any sort of scrutiny.

First of all, they said: Well, this doesn't provide enough money, even though all of them voted for funding at this level of $1.1 billion. They know that if in fact the public health needs in the country are significant enough that more funding is necessary, there will be an opportunity at some point, after due deliberation and discussion and appreciation for the nature of the problem and what the proper response would be for us to act again--but they already voted for funding at this level.

The next bogus argument is that this is somehow an attack on women's health; specifically, on Planned Parenthood. The fact is, there is not a word of Planned Parenthood in this bill. You will look in vain for the word ``Planned Parenthood'' because it is simply not there. What the Appropriations Committee decided to do and what the Senate and House working together decided was to direct funding for contraceptive birth control purposes to community health centers. It didn't exclude Planned Parenthood. In fact, if you are a Medicaid beneficiary, Planned Parenthood is a Medicaid provider and you can get those services provided at Planned Parenthood.

The other bogus argument is somehow there are environmental protection concerns. Well, the very virus that causes this terribly devastating birth defect is carried by mosquitoes. Why in the world would our colleagues across the aisle interfere with efforts to try to kill more mosquitoes before they cause this sort of devastating birth defect? This legislation doesn't erode environmental protections. It provides targeted regulatory relief to combat mosquitoes that carry this virus for a short period of time by making more insecticides available to public health officials like those in Houston I visited with recently who said part of their frontline effort to combat this virus is to kill mosquitoes, and it has informed the public that if you have pooling water in a flower bed or somewhere that can be a breeding ground for mosquitoes, you need to be attentive to that and eliminate that place where mosquitoes can breed and propagate.

So there is simply no good reason to deny funding to mothers who are worried about the possibility that they may contract the Zika virus that results in the devastating birth defects like that exhibited by Laura here. That is her name, Laura. She is 3 months old.

I hope when we come back next week, as the majority leader has said, the Democratic colleagues who voted against this emergency funding bill they so ardently had insisted upon for so long will have another chance to vote. I hope in the interim our friends across the aisle will search their souls--really their consciences--and they will have maybe a little twinge of regret for having voted to deny the funding for development of a vaccine and insect control and for research so we can learn more about this virus so we can learn how to combat it more effectively. That is what they denied us yesterday. That is what they denied women like Laura's mother who need this money so this doesn't happen to anybody else's child.

Mr. President, in just a few moments, we are going to have a chance to vote on a fiscally responsible bill to help Puerto Rico better take care of its economy. We know the government of Puerto Rico has gotten themselves into an impossible situation--$70 billion of debt that its government can't repay. We can all think about reasons they shouldn't have done that, and obviously it is fiscally responsible to do so, but they are in dire financial trouble, and they are going to have some $2 billion of payments they owe on July 1 to avoid defaulting on the debt.

I have been here long enough to know what happens when there is a fiscal crisis, and Puerto Rico is after all part of the United States. Puerto Ricans are American citizens. I have been here long enough to know that in an emergency setting with a fiscal financial crisis, one of the first things that happens is people will come to Congress and say: Can you provide a bailout--a bailout using taxpayer dollars. Well, a good thing--maybe the best thing--about the legislation we are getting ready to pass, which passed in the House of Representatives, is that not one penny of tax dollars is going to be used to deal with this financial crisis in Puerto Rico. You can look at the Congressional Budget Office score. They scored zero in terms of expenditure of tax dollars for bailing out Puerto Rico.

Some of us have seen ads on television that claim this bill is a bailout. Those are run by the very hedge funds that enjoyed the profits from investing in Puerto Rican bonds that are going to take a haircut because of the restructuring of that debt. Of course they are going to try to discourage us from trying to do anything about it, but we shouldn't listen to the hedge funds on Wall Street and the people who have gotten rich investing in these risky bonds. We ought to do right by all American taxpayers and make sure they are protected from a run on the Treasury by passing this legislation. As we know, this legislation would establish a Federal oversight board that would help to restructure their debt and going forward help them get on a fiscally responsible path because what our fellow citizens in Puerto Rico need most is an economy that is growing, creating jobs and opportunities so people can live where they were born, if they want to. They can stay there. Many of them have been leaving the island for some time because, frankly, it has turned into a fiscal and health-related nightmare.

I am glad we advanced this bill a little bit earlier today. We need to pass it and get it to the President's desk. I realize it is not perfect. I know many of us wish we had an opportunity to offer amendments and constructive suggestions, but given the timing for both the deadline for default on July 1 and the fact that we did not get this bill from the House until recently, we are on this constrained timeline, which makes it hard, if not impossible, to offer additional amendments, but it is important we pass this legislation and get our work done.

We will have a chance to vote on three matters. We will have an effort by the Senator from New Jersey to tear down the so-called amendment tree so he can offer some additional amendments. Those amendments are measures such as eliminating some of the protections that I think are necessary to make this bill a better bill.

Then we are going to have a budget point of order. I talked to the chairman of the Budget Committee. He said the budget point of order is a technicality because it has more to do with jurisdictional matters and not the fact that it busts the budget. In fact, this bill doesn't spend a penny--net--of Federal taxpayer dollars. Finally, we will have a chance to vote on final passage and then get it up to the President's desk.

I hope our colleagues will work with us. We had 68 votes on the earlier vote earlier today. I hope we will have a big vote in favor of fiscal responsibility, in favor of legislation that would avoid the potential for a taxpayer bailout, and demonstrate that we can simply work together on a bipartisan basis to pass good legislation.
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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I yield back all our time.

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