Global Health Security Act of 2020

Floor Speech

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Mr. McCAUL. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Speaker, as this painful year has hammered home: viruses and pandemics know no borders. The bipartisan Global Health Security Act reaffirms our commitment to promoting global health security as a core issue of national security.

This bill--and I want to thank my friend, Gerry Connolly and Steve Chabot, who, I am not sure if he will be able to speak or not--but I want to thank them for bringing this bill forward.

This bill directs the President to establish an interagency review council that will support our executive branch agencies and ensure coordination between their efforts. It also requires the designation of a lead official as the United States coordinator for Global Health Security, who will be responsible for coordinating the U.S. response to global health crises across agencies.

As our country continues to fight COVID-19 and this pandemic, we must make sure our preparations to fight future threats to the health and security of Americans are as efficient and effective as they can be.

Madam Speaker, I want to thank the sponsors of the bill, Mr. Connolly and Mr. Chabot, for their leadership in supporting and introducing this bill.

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Mr. McCAUL. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Speaker, I reiterate the vision of both Mr. Connolly and Mr. Chabot for introducing this bill, and the discussions I believe, as the gentleman stated from Virginia, took place 2 years ago, well before the COVID-19 pandemic.

Madam Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Chabot), who introduced the bill and is the coauthor.

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Mr. McCAUL. Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Missouri (Mrs. Wagner), an esteemed member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, the vice chairwoman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, and also a cosponsor of this bill.

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Mr. McCAUL. Madam Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

The thing I really enjoy about the Foreign Affairs Committee, as I know the Speaker would agree with me, is that it is bipartisan. I would say that the majority of bills passed out of our committee--in fact, I would say no other committee has passed more bipartisan bills than the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, as it should be.

I thank my good friend Joaquin Castro from Texas.

Of course, Madam Speaker, you are from Texas. We seem to have a trifecta here today from Texas.

But I will say Chairman Engel has been a great partner to me, working together as a chairman and ranking member should on a national security committee. We should put the interests of the Nation above partisan politics, and that has been our charge and our duty.

I am, quite frankly, proud to say that is how we have conducted ourselves in this Congress. It is very gratifying, Madam Speaker, to close out this session of Congress, before this very tumultuous election cycle and very divisive time in our politics and our American history, but for me to be able to close this out in a very bipartisan way, that, I think, is what most Americans out there want from their leaders in the Congress.

I thank the gentleman from Texas and the Speaker from Texas for your bipartisan support. I urge my colleagues to support this bill, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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