INCREASING OPPORTUNITY AND SUCCESS FOR CHILDREN AND PARENTS THROUGH EVIDENCE-BASED HOME VISITING ACT

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Madam Chair, I thank the gentleman for yielding. I thank Mr. Davis for his great leadership on this issue.
Madam Chair, I rise today in opposition to this bill.

Since its inception, MIECHV has been universally hailed as a tremendous success. It works, and it is cost effective. Participants like it; State and local governments like it; Democrats like it; and Republicans like it. It helps young families get off to a running start and makes sure that kids get the hand they need to stay on track.

I have seen this program work. The Nurse-Family Partnership program in Solano County, in my district, helps moms get the care and the support they need to have a healthy pregnancy and to learn to care for their babies. Home visits teach these new young moms the basics of raising healthy kids, helping them become more self-sufficient.

But instead of building on these successes and giving community programs the support they have been asking for, today the Republicans are focusing on undermining a great record of progress. Take, for instance, the new matching requirements in this bill.

When Congress created MIECHV, we authorized money for Tribes that don't have the resources to build home visiting programs on their own.

This bill would force those Tribes to attribute matching money--which they don't have--to keep their program going. That is a death sentence to Tribal programs like the one in my district in Lake County, California.

With the passage of this bill, we are shortchanging hundreds of vulnerable families that rely on these programs. In addition, poor communities--not just Tribal communities, but poor communities across the country--have the same funding challenges, and these are most often the areas that benefit the most from MIECHV. This bill hurts people in those communities.

With this bill, we are not empowering communities to raise healthy children; we are undermining a great bipartisan program, and for that I stand in opposition to this piece of legislation.

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