Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. RUBIO. Mr. President, I come to the floor again--I believe for the 10th time since March--to discuss the Zika virus.

The first time I talked about this was back in January. There was a report out that said Zika, the disease, was being transmitted by mosquitoes and there was an outbreak in Brazil. Immediately for me alarm bells went off because being from Miami, FL, my hometown, if you go to the airport and look at the board, the number of flights coming from Brazil to South Florida, the numbers are high. There are dozens of flights a week back and forth. My immediate thought at that time was that this is going to be an issue for Florida and ultimately for America, given the amount of travel back and forth.

I also saw the outbreak in the territory of Puerto Rico, a place I have taken a tremendous interest in since my time here. As everyone knows, Puerto Rico is not officially represented in this Chamber, but I, along with my colleagues Senator Menendez of New Jersey and Senator Nelson of Florida, have always looked out for the interests of the island and its people who are U.S. citizens. So knowing the link between Florida and Puerto Rico and the link between Zika and Puerto Rico, I knew as early as January that this was going to be an issue. I immediately talked to our Border Patrol folks and our Customs people at our airports and seaports about ensuring we are doing everything we can.

In March, when the President came out in February and March and talked about the need for $1.9 billion to fight Zika, I believe I was the first Republican--certainly in this Chamber--to come out in favor of that request because my argument at the time was, we don't know fully what we are dealing with here, but let's get ahead of it. Let's jump in front of it and let's deal with it. Otherwise it will only get worse. Unfortunately, that didn't happen.

In much of April and March, there was not much attention paid to this. So cases started coming up domestically, mostly travel-related. The Senate did move, and I am proud of the fact that after some back and forth, this place worked. We worked across the aisle, and I worked with Senator Nelson on his proposal and other proposals. In fact, I believe I am the only Member of Congress who voted in favor of every single Zika proposal because in my mind I wanted the money to flow so local governments and States could deal with it and researchers could develop a vaccine. We passed a law for $1.1 billion. It was a product of compromise. It was less than what the President asked for, but it began to move. Unfortunately, the House had a different idea and this is where we are today.

When we left in July, there had not been a reported case of a transmission of Zika by a mosquito, but as I warned through April, May, June, and July, it was only a matter of time. If you spent any amount of time in Florida, you know it is hot, it is humid, that it rains, and there are a lot of mosquitoes. You have a State which is a key entry point between key areas and the continental United States and you have mosquitoes. It didn't take a scientist or an expert in Zika to know the combination of those two things were going to lead to locally based transmission. Sadly, that is what is happening.

There is a neighborhood in Miami, FL, called Wynwood. This was an area that is economically depressed and it has come alive. It is a center of art. They have these murals where graffiti artists were allowed to come in and put in these extraordinary murals. It is not graffiti. It is art. It is a place where the art community is centered and has come alive with some of the best restaurants in South Florida. This is the Wynwood community.

It is a magnet for tourists. There are people who fly to Florida, and South Florida in particular, and go straight to Wynwood because they want to be in that area. It was the first area impacted, and the CDC came out with a warning telling people to avoid a neighborhood. This is usually the kind of advisory that goes out about avoiding other countries, telling Americans and travelers, specifically, to avoid a certain part of a certain neighborhood.

Can you imagine the impact it had on the businesses in that community? We talked about the human toll of Zika, of the infection, and of what it does to unborn children, but there is also the economic impact of having a lead health care agency in charge of public health in America issue a warning to Americans to avoid a neighborhood in an American city. I promise you that was not good for those businesses. Some of these businesses had to close for weeks on end and days on end.

Then a few weeks later we had reports of the disease being transmitted on Miami Beach. I don't need to tell you about Miami Beach. Everyone knows about Miami Beach. It is the cornerstone of tourism in South Florida. People come to Miami Beach from all over the world to enjoy world-class beaches, nightlife, entertainment, and restaurants. I want you to put yourself in a position of a small business owner--not just a large hotel chain, which is relevant here, but a small business owner.

Imagine if you are a family who runs a restaurant on Collins Avenue in Miami Beach. You are depending your whole year, your budget and your payroll is built on a predictable pattern of travelers coming in the summer and coming in the fall and especially in the winter. You are estimating the number of travelers who will come in. They will leave money at these restaurants and they are going to go home. Now you have a report of these transmissions and similar warnings as well. What you learn from this is that this Zika issue is not just a health care issue--and that is by far the primary focus of what our attention should be--but it is also an economic issue and it is hurting small businesses. It is hurting the municipalities. Miami Beach as a city is going to see tax revenues go down. It is going to hurt the State of Florida because of failed tax revenue and so forth. It is going to hurt one of the engines of our tourism sector--the reports of this transmission. You know what is hurting it even worse? When people turn on the news, people are hearing there are people being infected with Zika in Florida and Congress is still haggling and fighting over it and can't get anything done. That does not inspire confidence.

So today I have filed a bill, an additional bill, in addition to calling on us to move on Zika. Let me touch on this first. It is inexcusable. How did we get to this point? How did a public health crisis become a political tool to be played with back and forth? Yet that is what Washington has become, a place that has become expert at literally turning any issue into a political issue, and it has done so again with this issue. That is why people are grossed out and disgusted with American politics. When they watch the news and see this fighting, they don't get it. They understand there is this problem with Zika, and it is spreading and hurting people. We just had a case of a child born in Miami Dade County, at the Jackson Memorial Hospital--not with microcephaly but with Zika--a child, a baby, starting out life infected with Zika. They are asking: How can you guys turn this thing into a political issue? That is what Washington has done. Both parties are to blame. It took too long for some in my party to come to the realization this was important. On the Democratic side, they have come up with excuses to be against the proposal, but I will say this: The Senate did it. The Senate funded it. I think at this point, that is probably the fastest and best way forward, if we are serious about funding this, is to go back to what the Senate did. I continue to work with our colleagues to make sure that is a part of whatever vehicle we use to fund the government and keep it open through most of the rest of this year.

But today I filed a bill to help people being economically impacted by it. It is a bill that deals with the Small Business Administration. What it does is it basically gives the Small Business Administration the authority to give out small business loans to communities negatively impacted by health-related travel advisories issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. As you know, as I said earlier, the CDC has already issued those travel advisories to Wynwood and for the South Beach areas of Miami-Dade County, but that does not mean a week from now there will not be another area added to that, including another area in your State, my colleagues. You don't know when that is coming. So if they were hit by a storm, they would qualify for this. If they were hit by any other disaster, they would qualify for this. They have been hit by a storm. It happens to be a health care storm. It is hurting them economically. We need to make sure they have the flexibility and the ability to provide this short-term, low-interest loans to small businesses to be able to weather this health care Zika storm.

I don't know for the life of me why anybody would be against this. I don't know what possible way you could try to politicize it. I am not sure why anybody would object to it. My hope is, we can move quickly on this. It is important.

I know there is a lot of jurisdictional pride around here and committees will say: Well, you have to come through us first because we are the chairmen and this is our committee. I hope you can make an exception on this issue because these businesses are hurting. They are hurting badly because of what has happened, and it is only going to get worse for them as these reports come out.

I hope we can get that passed. Here is another thing people don't know. Our service men and women are deployed all over the world. Unlike people who travel, they don't have a choice. When the U.S. military tells you and your dependents you must now go to Honduras, you are now going to be stationed at a base in Guantanamo Bay or you are going to be stateside, but you are going to be in Puerto Rico--when they deploy you, you can't say: Well, I am not going because there is Zika there. You have to go. We need to make sure we are protecting our men and women.

According to the Pentagon, as of today, there are 81 servicemembers and 19 dependents who have tested positive for the Zika virus. Three of them, by the way, are pregnant. So I have filed a second bill to protect our servicemembers from Zika. It is called the Servicemembers' Zika Protection Act. It provides U.S. troops with additional protections from the Zika virus by authorizing the Secretary of Defense to transfer funds within the existing Department of Defense medical and health research accounts in order to combat the Zika virus.

I am hopeful we can unite behind that as well. With over 100 members of our military and their families already infected with Zika, we need to take specific precautions to help them and to help our foreign partners who host Americans on military bases in regions that are affected by Zika. So I am also hopeful Congress will ultimately arrive at an agreement this month to fund our Nation's response to Zika, but also that we ensure that those being deployed on our behalf receive every protection we can provide.

So these, in addition to the broader argument about Zika, these are two commonsense approaches giving the Department of Defense flexibility to move existing money around, to provide additional protections for our service men and women and their dependents who are being deployed and impacted by Zika. This is not a theory. We have over 100 people now, including 81 in uniform, who have been impacted by it, and 19 of their dependents, 3 of them who are pregnant.

Second, the small business relief. Please put yourself in the position of a family-owned business on South Beach or in Wynwood. They are being hurt. Instead of having 50 people coming in a day, they have 5 or 10. They need help. If they had lost power or been hit by a hurricane or a tornado, this would not be an issue, but they have been hit by a tornado of a different kind, one they did not cause and they could not predict and they could not insure against; that is, Zika.

Let's make sure the SBA has the flexibility to provide them their loans. So in addition to funding this--we have to get the Zika thing done, it cannot continue to languish--we have to get the SBA flexibility built into our law so these small businesses can be provided the resources they need to stay open and not close down as a result of a travel advisory because of a disease being spread by mosquitoes.

I think we would all agree we have to make sure we are doing everything we can to protect our men and women in uniform who are not going by choice. They are being deployed to these places where Zika is prevalent. They are being infected. There is no excuse for us to not help them as well. So these are the three things I hope we will do before Congress adjourns at the end of this month: Fund Zika fully, give flexibility for our small businesses that have been impacted by Zika to get SBA loans, and do everything we can by passing a law that gives the Department of Defense the flexibility they need to use existing money to protect our men and women in uniform and their families from being infected by Zika when deployed. ______

By Mrs. BOXER:

S. 3302. A bill establishing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Emergency Response Fund for the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to provide assistance for a public health emergency, and for other purposes; to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source