Zika Funding

Floor Speech

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Mr. GARAMENDI. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from California for the opportunity to speak this evening. We have just been listening to a very lengthy discussion on the part of the healthcare issues in the United States, and, undoubtedly, the family or the small community pharmacist is a piece of the solution to the problems. But I want to spend the next 10 minutes or so, maybe a little longer, talking about a problem that currently affects some 19,000 Americans and a problem that is growing every day.

This is the new four-letter word that we fear. We are accustomed to a lot of four-letter words, but this one begins with a Z. This is the Zika crisis. This is a very, very real problem for some 1,600 pregnant women in the United States. This is a problem that men and women that intend to have a family, women that intend to bear children, get pregnant in the days and months ahead have a gut feeling of fear--a deep, deep fear--and husbands, spouses, and lovers similarly.

This is the Zika crisis. We have heard a lot about it during the Olympics. It hasn't passed off the radar screen except here in Congress. I know it is on the minds of Californians, over 500 in California, and nearly 15,500 Americans in Puerto Rico. They have that fear. They have Zika.

So all across this Nation, this new four-letter word is not used as a cuss word. It is a word of fear, and it is a word of trouble. Apparently, in the Halls of your Capitol, in the Halls of the United States Congress, it is ignored. Several months ago, we did pass a piece of legislation that was supposed to deal with this. But understand this: The Centers for Disease Control is about to run out of money at the end of this month and will have to stop research on Zika, on the virus, on vaccines, and on how it is spread.

We know that the mosquito is a piece of this, and we know it is prime mosquito time across much of the United States. Let me show you a map-- a lot of blue on that map. That doesn't mean Democrat. That means Zika. Where you see the bright blue, that is where the Zika mosquito--the aedes--is found, and this is where we presently have cases.

South Florida, the only time in American history that there has been a travel alert for health reasons within the Continental United States is now found in south Florida. Why? Because now we have mosquitos that are spreading the virus.

In other parts of the Nation, we know that this mosquito is present, and we know it is going to happen, if not this year then next year. This is not something that is going to go away in the next few months as winter approaches. It will come back next year, and it will come back with a greater vengeance, just as the West Nile virus that spread across the United States is now found in most every State. But that is not an illness that leads to the tragedy of children being born with severe injuries that will affect them the rest of their lives, which may be a very short life.

This is a problem. This is a problem that your United States Congress is ignoring. There is a bill bouncing around, and it is loaded with a bunch of riders that are: What are you talking about? Riders that prevent women's health clinics from providing assistance to women. It is the women, after all, that bear the great burden of this. They are the ones that are going to be pregnant. They are the ones that will be carrying the children. But those women's health clinics cannot allow access to the money. What in the world is that all about? What foolishness. What meanness.

By the way, none of the money can be used for contraception. Give me a break. What do you mean? That is the legislation that is being proposed here in the United States Congress. Even the Pope has suggested that because of this crisis in Brazil that the steadfast opposition of the Vatican to contraception may need to be pushed aside. But not here in the House of Representatives. Come on. Let's get real. Let's understand the nature of this crisis.

The Zika virus is not transmitted only by mosquitos. We are discovering that the transmission can come in many, many different ways--many different ways. So what are we doing about it? Nothing. We are spending time talking about impeaching the IRS Commissioner. Come on. In the history of this Nation, only one person other than a President has been impeached, and that was back in the 1870s, a Secretary of War. An IRS Commissioner is not even a Cabinet member. We are spending our time on that.

We are where, 20 days, a little less, from the end of the fiscal year when we have to fund government? We are less than what, 17 days away from the ability of the Centers for Disease Control to continue to research and to address this issue? Look at the map, Americans. Every State. And Puerto Rico is not on this map, and they are Americans. There are over 15,000 cases there and more than 1,000 women who are pregnant and many, many more who will become pregnant. So what is your United States Congress doing? Dithering would be an insufficient word to address this crisis.

This is a public health crisis. This is a crisis that the solution presented to us a few months ago was to take money out of the Ebola program. Did we forget about Ebola? Did it go away? No, it did not. That money was being spent on monitoring the travelers from those areas of Africa where Ebola still exists. So that money is gone. So I suppose, in the next months or year ahead, we will go back into the Ebola problem once again.

Money was taken from the public health programs in counties throughout the United States. The proposal that moved out of this House of Representatives swept from the counties and the States money that the public health departments in those areas needed to deal with public health emergencies, one of which was Zika. And there are other public health emergencies that are always before us. I mentioned the West Nile virus. California has a whooping cough problem that is ongoing, and that is a public health crisis. Children die of that.

So what is the solution? Not what we normally do when we have a crisis, which is to go to the Federal Treasury and say: America has a problem. Americans will solve that problem or address that problem and try to deal with the effect of it by appropriating money so that we can address it.

When the terrible floods occurred recently in Louisiana, did we raid other agencies to deal with it? No. We go to FEMA, and we go to the emergency funding, as we did with Katrina, as we did with Sandy, and as we do with the fires, hurricanes, and tornadoes. But not with Zika. Somehow Zika is different.

If you are a grandmother or a grandfather and your granddaughter is about to get married, what is on your mind? The wedding to be sure. But you are also thinking about that pregnancy that might be following, and you are thinking: will my daughter or my granddaughter acquire the Zika virus? What will it mean?

Apparently, that thought is not found in my fellow colleagues here on the floor of the House of Representatives, even though they have children, even though they have daughters and granddaughters, even though within their families there will be pregnancies. We have got to think about this. Maybe there are 16,000 affected in the United States today. But this virus is not going away. This virus is going to be with us years ahead, and the effects of it are going to be felt in the next generations. It is already here in the United States.

We have had babies born with serious defects as a result of Zika. It is already with us. And there will be more. There will be many, many more.

This public health crisis must be met by the full power of the Federal Government, just as we meet other crises. It is our responsibility. 535 of us and the President.

The President has asked for $1.9 billion to deal with this health crisis. The response by my colleagues on the Republican side of the House of Representatives, a little over $6 million, most of which is stolen from other public health programs. Disgraceful. Dereliction of responsibility.

The Senate is talking about a $1.1 billion program. Good. Without riders, without the kind of foolish riders that are being presented here. Good. Let's get on with it. We will take the Senate bill. Give us a clean Senate bill so that there is money available for the Centers for Disease Control to continue its research, so that there is money available for the public health programs in south Florida, in Texas, in Puerto Rico, California, and in other States to carry on the fight against the mosquitoes and to deal with the other methods of transmission, to warn the public, to prepare the public. We can do it.

Anybody that knows how much money the Federal Government spends every year knows that $1 billion to address a fundamental public health crisis is available. It is readily available. We ought to get on with it. And shame on us if we don't.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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