Control Unlawful Fugitive Felons Act of 2017

Floor Speech

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Mr. Speaker, MIECHV Program is an effective evidence-based program that I am proud to support because I know it results in healthier families and stronger communities, but I am shocked at the way Republicans are choosing to pay for it.

Instead of enacting commonsense tax changes that could easily raise the needed revenue, Republicans have reached to the bottom of the barrel to find vulnerable people to harm.

In order to come up with a way to pay for this important bipartisan program, they are choosing to take Supplemental Security Income away from vulnerable seniors, low-income individuals, or those with disabilities; and they are doing it by maligning them as fugitives and felons just because they have an outstanding warrant. But the truth is a very different story.

The people who will be hurt by this bill are not hardened criminals.

They haven't even had their day in court yet. In fact, many may not even know about the warrant because the police have decided that it is not worth pursuing. That is because the warrants are for small issues like writing a bad check or failing to appear for a hearing many years ago.

Worse, these individuals are elderly, poor, or sick. They deserve support and help, not to be treated as a piggybank. Actually, piggybanks generally indicate savings. This is a policy equivalent of reaching into a couch cushion for change. We are talking about individuals who have a warrant from when they were a teenager or somebody with a mental illness who may not even remember the incident in question. This is cruel and unbecoming of this Congress.

I know because we have tried this before. The last time this penalty was used, it meant catastrophe for very low-income people with disabilities and for seniors. It hurt people like J.H., a Californian with an intellectual disability and other mental impairments. J.H. had his SSI benefits stopped because of an Ohio warrant issued when he was 12 years old and running away to escape an abusive stepfather. This 4- foot-7-inch-tall, 85-pound boy was charged with assault for kicking a staff member at a detention center where he was being held until his mother could pick him up. Many years later, he had no recollection of the incident or the charges, but his SSI benefits were stopped nonetheless.

Is that really how we want to pay for home visitations: Impoverishing one person to help another?

That is why I worked to curb this bill's negative effects, by offering amendments that would protect those with dementia or keep it from increasing homelessness. Unfortunately, Republicans rejected both my amendments on a party line basis, so now we are stuck with this overly broad punitive bill that I cannot support.

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