Water Resources Development Act of 2016

Floor Speech

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Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, if ever there were an issue that ought to be bipartisan, it is tackling the Zika virus because this virus, of course, is taking an enormous toll on our country.

What we are seeing is women and men getting infected, research stalling out, and babies being born with deformities and severe disabilities. My view is there shouldn't be anything partisan about tackling this. It ought to be common sense. The Senate ought to come together, and we should have done it quite some time ago. Yet Republican leaders seem to be putting this into slow motion because they want to limit access to the very health services pregnant women depend on for their care. When you listen to their view, it is almost like giving pregnant women cans of bug spray and wishing them good luck. In my view, that defies common sense.

What I have always felt--and this has been true throughout my time in public service--is that with the big public health issues where the safety and well-being of so many Americans is on the line, you say: What we are going to do is we are going to do our job, we are going to come together, and we are going to do it in a bipartisan fashion based on what researchers and public health authorities say makes sense.

Yet here the Senate is on an issue that is at the forefront of the minds of millions of American women and families, and what we are being told by Republicans is that the price of dealing with the Zika virus is limiting women's rights and reducing access to reproductive health care, and so much of that agenda is a preventive agenda, which is exactly what the public health authorities say is most important.

My hope is that this Congress is very quickly going to say that we are going to set aside the anti-women, anti-family language, and, as part of a must-pass bill, that we are going to say we are going to come together as a body, Democrats and Republicans, and address what are clear public health recommendations of the leading specialists in this country and do the job that Americans told us to do, which is, when you have something that affects millions of Americans and their health and safety--I had a number of forums on the Zika virus this summer in Oregon. It is a great concern. For example, the Oregon Health Sciences Center, our premier health research body, is very concerned about the research agenda stalling out.

I would say to my colleagues, let's set aside this question of trying to find ideological trophies as part of the Zika legislation. Let's address the clear public health recommendations we have received. Let's do it in a bipartisan way. Let's do it in a way that reflects common sense, and let's do it quickly.

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