Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act of 2016--Conference Report
Floor Speech
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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, 5 months--5 months--that is how long it has been since the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention formally asked the U.S. Congress to respond to a public health emergency to combat the Zika virus--5 months.
In that time, we have seen the number of Americans infected with Zika soar to 3,667. Of those, 599 are pregnant women. In Illinois, there are 26 confirmed cases of Zika--5 months. To date, seven infants have been born with Zika-related birth defects in the United States. Five pregnancies have ended because of Zika-related birth defects--5 months. Last week, Utah health officials announced the first U.S. death related to the Zika virus--5 months. In Puerto Rico, where this situation gets worse by the day, officials reported a 1-week jump of 40 percent in the number of pregnant women on the island diagnosed with Zika--5 months. Three thousand, six hundred sixty-seven Americans to date are infected with Zika that we know of, 599 pregnant women, 7 babies born with severe birth defects, 5 ended because of the virus, and the first Zika- related death--5 months since the President of the United States said this was a public health crisis.
The Republican-controlled Congress has waited 5 months to respond to this crisis, and now we are on the verge of leaving town for 7 more weeks--until September, after the conventions--and we will leave without providing our Federal health agencies the money they urgently need to fight Zika. By the time Congress returns, it will be 7 months since the President asked Congress on an emergency basis to deal with this public health crisis of Zika. Every single American should be disgusted by this, and every single Member of Congress should be embarrassed.
What is perhaps most infuriating about this situation is that we have a bipartisan Zika funding bill ready to go, and the President would sign it tomorrow if he could. In May, the Senate passed a bill. I will concede, it was 3 months after the President asked for it, but we did pass a bill. We had 89 votes supporting a bill to provide $1.1 billion to fight this public health disaster. It was less than the President asked, but was a good-faith, bipartisan effort supporting mosquito control programs, lab capacity, surveillance efforts, and maternal health services. It wasn't the bill that Democrats would have written or the President asked for. It wasn't really the bill that the Republicans wanted to start with. It was a bipartisan, good-faith compromise.
But what happened to that bill after it left the Senate? Instead of that bipartisan bill moving through the House and quickly to the President, it went into a conference committee, and that is when things went terribly bad. Right before adjourning for the Fourth of July recess, the House Republicans decided to take our bipartisan bill with 89 votes and load it up like a right-wing Christmas tree. They decided to attack environmental protection by overturning the clean water regulations. They decided to block money to women's health providers. Most people remember when the Republicans were prepared to shut down the government of the United States over the funding of Planned Parenthood. Now, in this bill that they have sent back to us from conference, they are prepared to shut down our response to this public health crisis of the Zika virus in order to defund Planned Parenthood.
It also undermines the Affordable Care Act, which has been a traditional whipping boy of the rightwing, and it raids Ebola funds. They knew the Democrats wouldn't accept these riders. They made it as disgusting and repugnant politically as it could be. They said: Remember, we don't need Ebola funds. It turns out we do.
To this day, the CDC still has 80 disease specialists stationed in West Africa. A few months ago, there was an Ebola cluster in Guinea. In order to respond to that unexpected outbreak, the CDC had to vaccinate 1,700 people, track 20,000 people through surveillance, and open five emergency operation centers in two different countries.
The Republicans say: Well, we will just take the money away from Ebola, maybe things will work out fine in Africa.
The Republican bill proposes decimating our Ebola prevention funding and diverting the resources. The majority leader and majority whip claim the House Zika bill is a compromise and bipartisan. Let me be clear. It is neither. It is not a compromise, and it is not bipartisan. Not a single Democrat signed the conference report that came out of the House. Despite the fact that 89 Senators of both parties had voted for bipartisan funding in the Senate, when they took it into conference, it turned into a political football.
This is a cynical attempt by the Republicans in the House to hijack a public health crisis and push a grab bag of their favorite unrelated poison pill riders. That is why their bill, as shown by the vote here last month, is a nonstarter in the Senate, and it is a nonstarter with the American people.
What is being lost during this entire posturing and politicizing is the very real toll Zika is taking. During the past 5 months, we have discovered new and alarming things about Zika. We know the Zika virus can be transmitted through sexual contact. Women infected with Zika in their first trimester can face a 13-percent likelihood of a baby born with a serious problem. Even if a pregnant woman doesn't show any signs of infection, her baby can be born with serious, physical, and neurological disorders.
It has been 5 months since the President asked for funding. This Republican-led Congress just can't get it right. Eighty-nine Senators, Democrats and Republicans, came up with a bipartisan answer, they couldn't get it through the House of Representatives, and we sit here today languishing in this political mess.
Researchers are examining the links to other negative health consequences: eye infections that lead to blindness, autoimmune disorders that cause paralysis related to Zika virus.
What about the impact of maternal stress on the baby? I spent the last several weeks meeting with maternal and fetal health care providers and community health leaders in Chicago. Yesterday I was in the Belleville area. They shared with me the fear and stress their patients are experiencing. Hundreds of pregnant women in Illinois are seeking care and advice from doctors. They have undergone tests to make sure their babies are safe. Sadly, three of those Illinois women have learned they are already infected with Zika. I am sick and tired of this political game being played by the House and Senate Republicans when it comes to a public health crisis.
The President got it right 5 months ago. Why can't this Congress get it right now before we leave for this 7-week vacation? Enough is enough. It is time for the Republican majority in the House and the Senate to do their job: respond to this public health crisis in a sensible, bipartisan way, just as our bill that passed the Senate with 89 votes addressed, instead of making this a political test for the most outrageous claims.
Did I mention the fact that in conference, the House and Senate Republicans decided to add another provision when it came to this public health crisis? That provision would allow the display of Confederate flags in veterans cemeteries. Give me a break. What does that have to do with this public health crisis or honoring our men and women in the military or our veterans who have served our country well?
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Mr. DURBIN. Will the Senator yield through the Chair for a question?
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Mr. DURBIN. Through the Chair, I would ask the Senator from Florida whether it is true that it has been 5 months since President Obama declared this public health emergency and asked the Congress to respond to that emergency in a timely way. He asked for emergency funding of $1.9 billion for mosquito abatement, for medical research, for expanding lab facilities, and for investing in developing a vaccine to protect Americans, if not this year, next year.
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Mr. DURBIN. I ask the Senator through the Chair, in dealing with a public health emergency, a public health crisis, the potential of an epidemic that we now think could infect 25 percent of the population of Puerto Rico, is a timely response an important part of the congressional response?
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Mr. DURBIN. I ask the Senator--and I see my colleague, Senator Murray of Washington, on the floor, who is in a very important position, and she is going to address this issue in a few moments. But is it not true that we worked out a bipartisan compromise in the Senate--not to give $1.9 billion, which, on the Democratic side, is our aspiration, but at least to agree with the Republicans in the Senate to $1.1 billion to respond to the President's request for an emergency response; and that we passed the bill in the Senate with 89 votes--an overwhelming bipartisan vote--with an agreement and a compromise in May, and this was sent over to the House of Representatives in May of this year?
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Mr. DURBIN. I would ask the Senator through the Chair--so we have the President identifying a public health emergency and the President telling us--and the CDC as well--that delaying this makes a possibility or probability of an epidemic even worse. We have a response by the Senate, on a bipartisan basis with 89 votes, to provide over $1 billion for the President to get to work to protect America and to develop a vaccine. And is it not true that the House was given this measure with 89 votes and failed to send it back to us on a timely basis?
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Mr. DURBIN. I ask the Senator from Florida, through the Chair, is it also true that the bill sent to us by the House, after we passed a bipartisan bill with 89 votes, had no Democratic signatories--no House Members of the Democratic Party signing onto this conference report that was sent over to us--so it was a totally Republican conference report?
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Mr. DURBIN. I ask the Senator from Florida, through the Chair, is it also not true, based on the statements made by the Republican majority leader, Senator McConnell of Kentucky, that he is going to give us one last chance in the next 48 hours to either take this partisan version of the bill, addressing this public health crisis, or do nothing for the next 7 weeks?
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Mr. DURBIN. I would ask the Senator from Florida my last question. I know my other colleagues are waiting to ask questions. Your State, the State of Florida, appears to be vulnerable--more vulnerable than most States--because of your proximity to Puerto Rico and other places and the number of travelers coming into the State of Florida from areas where we know for certain that the Zika virus is starting to be manifest. I ask the Senator from Florida: What are you hearing back in your State about the need for a timely, bipartisan effort in Congress to deal with the public health crisis of the Zika virus?
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Mr. DURBIN. Well, I said it was the last question. I will ask one more, if I may, through the Chair. I would ask the Senator from Florida this: So you have Senator Rubio, a well-known Republican from Florida, and Senator Bill Nelson, maybe the best known Democrat from Florida, agreeing that this is an emergency that needs to be dealt with on a timely basis, that the President's request for $1.9 billion is a reasonable request, that we pass a bipartisan measure--Senate Democrats and Senate Republicans--and that we are moving toward solving this problem and responding to it. Is it not true that this measure fell apart or broke down when it ended up in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, where they did not take a bipartisan approach to the issue?
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Mr. DURBIN. I thank the Senator
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