Unfinished Business: CBC to Republican Leadership--Do Your Job

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Ms. KELLY of Illinois. I thank Congresswoman Beatty and Congressman Jeffries because they have held it down for a long time now and have made us proud to be members of the Congressional Black Caucus because of how they present themselves in the Special Order hours and how they have taken on the responsibility. I thank both of them so very much.

When I think about unfinished business, one knows where I am going. I think about the gun violence that is still occurring in, what I represent, the Chicagoland area. We are up to 618 deaths and 3,273 shootings. Now, I don't know about today, because it is occurring every day. I know it is not just about the legislation, but we do need background checks; we do need a national straw purchasing bill and bills that pass; we need gun trafficking bills.

We need to improve, as you have heard, police-community relations, but we also need to invest in people. We need to invest in underserved communities: we need to make sure that people have decent housing, decent educations, that they get the job skills they need so that they can have jobs. There are too many who are still unemployed, and that is why the violence occurs. We need more mentors.

I have a bill like my past colleague just said, the Urban Progress bill. The bill was presented, but it never went anywhere, which was just like the background check bill. It is a bipartisan bill--190 cosponsors--but the bill never gets called to the floor. We have spent time--I believe 68 times--in trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act, but we have never sat down to see: What are the problems? Where do you think it should be improved? No. We just tried to repeal everything.

There are great things about that bill. There are so many more people covered who would not have been covered.

I am the chair of the Congressional Black Caucus' Health Braintrust.

African Americans die from 8 of the top 10 diseases, and that is because of a lack of access to places. The Affordable Care Act has definitely helped in that arena, but we need to do more. We need to send funding to NIH, and we can do more.

We are the wealthiest country in the world, yet we have the amount of homelessness we have and the amount of violence we have. We have a lack of affordable college education. Our students are suffering. They cannot live the American Dream because we are not doing the right thing in Congress--so much unfinished business. We talk about people pulling themselves up by the bootstraps, but they have to have the straps on the boots to be able to pull themselves up. It seems like we don't have the American heart, that we don't have the caring.

Immigration--there was a bill we could have passed in the House, but we just don't call the bills to the floor. We are just, really, ignoring so many things, and I don't see how we could feel proud when we go back to our districts when there are so many things that we haven't done. I hope in this, as we call it, lameduck session it is not too late and we can call some of these bills to the floor. We can save lives by calling bills to the floor.
In Flint, they can drink clean, quality water if we do what we are supposed to do. We cannot sit and rest on
our laurels. When we go into 2017, if we want cooperation and if we want the spirit of unity, we need to see that cooperation and unity now, not just in 2017.

I thank the gentlewoman for giving me the opportunity. Let's do our jobs.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source