Providing for Consideration of H.R. Stop Settlement Slush Funds Act of 2016
Floor Speech
(Mr. McGOVERN asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)
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Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Collins), my friend, for yielding me the customary 30 minutes.
Mr. Speaker, this week, we return from 7 weeks away from the Capitol, the longest summer recess in modern times, and House Republicans continue to delay action on the most pressing issues facing our country, instead focusing on issues that benefit special interests, and issues, quite frankly, that are going nowhere.
I had hoped that after we all spent some time with our constituents over the summer recess, the priorities of this Republican leadership would change to reflect what the American people actually care about, but they haven't. During our 252 days in session--which, by the way, includes 42 pro forma days where no legislative business was accomplished--we have voted on countless bills to repeal the Affordable Care Act, undermine financial protections put in place by Dodd-Frank, and weaken environmental protections. We are back on the floor this week to deregulate Wall Street, take away critical investor protections, and make it easier for those who break the law to get away without paying a financial price.
Today's rule provides for the consideration of a bill that eliminates public interest protections, creates needless litigation and delay, and imposes draconian penalties on Federal officials. It is a misinformed response to a nonexistent problem, and just one more corporate giveaway by this Republican Congress. And, again, remember, it is going nowhere.
This isn't leadership, Mr. Speaker. It is like a recurring nightmare. While spending time on efforts that are nothing more than sound bites from my friends on the other side of the aisle to use on the campaign trail, this Republican Congress has repeatedly ignored the calls of our constituents to act on issues they care about--issues that impact our communities, our neighborhoods, and our families.
House Republicans continue to obstruct meaningful action on the greatest public health crisis impacting our country. Almost 17,000 Americans, including nearly 1,600 pregnant women, are currently suffering from the Zika virus. This month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will run out of resources to fight Zika. In the words of Dr. Thomas Frieden of the CDC, ``We need Congress to act.''
For 7 months, President Obama and Democrats in Congress have urged the Republican leadership to take up and pass the administration's emergency supplemental request. But instead of considering a bipartisan Zika funding bill, the Republican leadership in this House has, once again, caved to the most extreme faction of their conference to produce an inadequate, partisan bill loaded with poison pill offsets.
This is an emergency. We should treat it as such. But Republicans have spent months making excuses about why we don't need to provide the full funding that our Nation's public health experts say we need. We have had public health expert after public health expert tell us that we need to act, and yet my Republican friends think they know better. They have brought to the floor legislation to undermine the Clean Water Act under the guise of containing the Zika virus. They have even insisted on poison pill riders that continue the Republican assault on women's access to comprehensive health care, instead of bringing legislation that is focused solely on protecting American families from the terrible impacts of Zika.
House Republicans have blocked the full emergency resources needed to combat the Zika virus seven times, and left town for a 53-day recess without committing a dime to address this growing public health crisis. It is shameful.
In addition to shirking our responsibilities on the Zika virus, this Republican leadership has prevented action on other public health emergencies like the opiate crisis and the terrible tragedy in Flint, Michigan, and the epidemic of gun violence plaguing our communities.
Congress passed a bill to address the opiate crisis and it was an important step, but we must do more. We need to pass a strong piece of legislation that actually funds our fight against the opiate crisis and gives State and local partners the resources they need to help so many of our communities that have been hit hard by this epidemic. Passing a bill that has all these nice statements in it and nice goals and not funding it, well, that is just a press release, and that is about the extent of what this Congress has done to deal with this terrible opiate crisis.
For 2 years, 100,000 people in Flint, Michigan, could not access safe water from their own faucets--100,000 people. For 2 years, hardworking Americans were denied the fundamental right of access to potable water. We are not talking about some tiny country halfway around the world. This has been happening right here in the United States of America.
The Families of Flint Act, led by my friend and colleague, Congressman Dan Kildee, would help the people of Flint, Michigan, recover from this man-made disaster that they are still dealing with; but this Congress is too busy wasting its time to even consider bringing this vitally important, noncontroversial bill up for a vote.
Where is the majority leadership on this? Why are they simply sitting back and allowing countless families in Flint to continue to be unable to turn on their faucets and receive the safe water that they need and, quite frankly, that should be a basic right in this country, the very same safe water that Speaker Ryan and so many of us take for granted?
In fact, it was recently discovered that there were elevated levels of lead in the Cannon House Office Building. Congress has spared no expense in addressing that issue, yet has failed to give the Families of Flint Act a single vote or hearing even in this Chamber.
This Republican Congress has failed Flint by refusing to adequately fund our water infrastructure for years, and we are failing them again by not passing this commonsense legislation.
While we have delayed action on a response to the Zika virus and to the crisis in Flint, Michigan, House Republicans have also refused to act on bipartisan, commonsense legislation to keep guns out of the hands of suspected terrorists and criminals. In fact, House Republicans have voted 24 times to block the no-fly, no-buy measure, which polls indicate is supported by 74 percent of our constituents. They have blocked debate on legislation to expand and strengthen background checks.
If you go to a licensed gun dealer, you have to go through a background check, but if you go to a gun show or if you buy a gun online, you don't have to go through a background check. What sense does that make? Who could be against that? Yet they have voted time and time again to deny us the right to bring that to the floor. They have voted five times against lifting the 19-year-long ban on Federal research on gun violence. What is the Republican Congress so afraid of?
We came back yesterday. I was looking through the press and was trying to figure out if, maybe, the Republican leadership in this House would actually do something about gun violence in order to protect the American people and to make sure that people who have a history of violent crime don't have access to guns or that people who are dangerously, mentally ill don't have access to guns. I thought, maybe, some of their constituents would kind of knock some common sense into their heads while they were on recess.
But we come back, and what do we read? What is the Republican leadership's response to all of this?
They want to bring a resolution to the floor to punish Democrats for having the audacity to raise our voices in protest over the fact that we cannot even get a vote on any of these bills that we think could save lives. They want to punish us; they want to sanction us; they want to condemn us because we said that, in the greatest deliberative body in the world, we ought to be able to deliberate.
Apparently, the Republican leadership is outraged over what they say is a breach of decorum that shut down the Chamber for 25 hours because Democrats had a sit-in here in protest over the fact that we can't bring any legislation up for a debate. They are outraged over that. That is where their outrage is.
My question is: Where is the outrage over the 50 innocent civilians who were killed in Orlando? Where is the outrage over the 14 people who were killed in San Bernardino or over the 9 people who were killed in a church in Charleston, South Carolina? Is there any outrage over that? Where is the outrage over the 27, mostly children, who were killed in Newtown, Connecticut, or over the 12 people who were killed in a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, or the outrage over the 6 people who were killed in Tucson, Arizona, where our former colleague, Gabby Giffords, was shot, or over the 32 people who were killed at Virginia Tech?
Since my Republican friends have been in recess, over 4,000 Americans have been shot and killed in gun violence in this country--over 4,000. Where is the outrage? The only outrage that my Republican friends seem to have is over the fact that Democrats have had the audacity to raise this question about maybe we should do something, maybe we can do something to protect our constituents.
I say to my colleagues: We don't need a slap on the wrist from the Republican leadership here. We need to reform our laws to ensure that guns are kept out of the wrong hands.
Over 32,000 people in America die from gun violence each year--about 89 people per day. If this isn't a public health emergency, Mr. Speaker, I don't know what is.
But you come back, and this is what we are going to be debating on the House floor? Oh, my God. This is it? I mean the outrage, quite frankly, from the American people against the leadership of this House is over the fact that the Republican leaders have turned this place into a Congress in which trivial issues are debated passionately and important ones not at all. Enough. Let's do the people's business. We are not doing it today, and I hope that my colleagues will reconsider their agenda for the time we are back here and will actually do something meaningful.
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Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I just say to my friend from Georgia that I am not pontificating; I am just expressing frustration over the fact that we are not doing anything of any consequence here on the House floor. This legislation that we are dealing with today--in fact, the legislation that we are going to deal with later in the week--is going nowhere. Yet we have a Zika crisis; we have a crisis in Flint, Michigan; and we have a crisis of people who are dying from gun violence in this country. For some reason, the Republicans who run this House can't find the time to spend even 1 day talking about those things.
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Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, can I inquire of the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Collins) how many more speakers he has who want to speak on this bill on his side? I know the demand has been really great.
Mr. Speaker, let me put this in perspective for everybody. We can have this conversation here and maybe people can do press releases after we have a vote on it, but I think we all know that this bill is going nowhere, and it is going nowhere fast. So we are essentially wasting our time, we are wasting taxpayer dollars, and we are doing so at a moment when we have some serious challenges and serious crises facing our country.
I mentioned gun violence. My friends don't want to do anything about that; although, according to the press, they want to bring a resolution to slap our wrists. That is their outrage over all the gun violence that we have seen, the massacres that we have seen in this country. I find that stunning, quite frankly. I mean, it takes my breath away that, in the aftermath of all that has gone on, that that is the best they can do. Nonetheless, that is their solution, and it is another waste of time.
We have a crisis in Flint, Michigan, where people still can't turn on their faucets. We are not talking about a country halfway around the world. We are talking about a community here in the United States of America where clean water ought to be a right, and yet we can't seem to schedule the time to do anything to help solve that problem.
We passed a bill that had some good goals in it with regard to the opiate crisis that we are facing, but we haven't passed any funding for it yet. So people can go back home and say, ``Oh, we did something,'' but really they didn't, because a bill that sets out nice goals that doesn't have any funding really is nothing more than a press release. We are not talking about funding for any of those priorities to deal with the opiate crisis.
Then there is the Zika crisis, which is getting worse and worse and worse, and yet we can't find the time this week to do anything about it. I find that appalling.
Mr. Speaker, I am going to urge my colleagues to defeat the previous question. If we defeat the previous question, I will offer an amendment to the rule to bring up legislation that fully funds the administration's efforts to mount a robust and long-term response to the growing Zika crisis.
The administration requested funding 7 months ago, and the Republican majority has refused to consider legislation that would adequately address the seriousness of this situation. Due to Republican inaction, the administration has been forced to repurpose nearly $600 million dedicated to other pressing public health needs to stem the growing tide of this disaster. Guess what. That money is about to run out, and there are now nearly 17,000 cases of Zika in the United States and territories. As CDC Director Frieden said, ``The cupboard is bare.'' The time for half measures and political posturing has long since passed. The time to act is now.
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Mr. McGOVERN. In conclusion, Mr. Speaker, I again appeal to the leadership of this House: Do something. Do something that will help somebody in this country.
I get it. Elections are coming up, and everybody is engaged in political posturing. You know, we were elected to actually try to help people and help solve problems.
I have to tell you, by any objective measure, the leadership of this House has failed. I mean, it has failed on Flint. It has failed on the Zika crisis. It has failed on gun violence. It has failed on confronting this opiate crisis. I can go on and on and on again. I can point to 70-plus times that we voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act. All of these messaging bills that were written in the basement of the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee, I guess you go back home and brag about those things, but at the end of the day, you haven't done anything.
I hope that in these few weeks that we are back before we recess again that maybe some common sense can prevail on the Republican side and we can actually do something, something that will help all of our constituents, especially with this Zika crisis. This is a crisis. If that doesn't compel everybody to do something to provide the funding necessary to combat it, I mean, given what we have seen, then I don't know what will move my Republican colleagues.
Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' and defeat the previous question, and then vote ``no'' on this rule to consider a bill that, quite frankly, is going nowhere and is a waste of our time.
I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.
The yeas and nays were ordered.
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Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.
A recorded vote was ordered.
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