Providing for Consideration of H.R. Pregnant Students' Rights Act; Providing for Consideration of H.R. Supporting Pregnant and Parenting Women and Families Act; and Providing for Consideration of H. Res. Denouncing the Biden Administration's Open-Borders Policies, Condemning the National Security and Public Safety Crisis Along the Southwest Border, and Urging President Biden to End His Administration's Open-Borders Policies

Floor Speech

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Ms. SCANLON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Minnesota for yielding the customary 30 minutes.

Mr. Speaker, here we are, a little more than 48 hours from a devastating government shutdown. The deadline to pass a Federal budget is already 3 months overdue, and the clock keeps ticking.

Unable to get control of their majority and act responsibly, Republicans keep kicking the can down the road. They have struggled to pass any legislation because they choose again and again to appease an extremist minority rather than to advance policies supported by the majority of Americans and their Representatives here in the House.

Moreover, now, as we face pressing challenges at home and around the world, they have brought us to the brink of disaster once more, all because they chose to renege on a bipartisan deal to fund the government.

So, with these serious problems we are facing, what are House Republicans' priorities for today? They are to attack the President and pass more anti-abortion bills. It is a new year, but for House Republicans, it is the same old story.

Distracted by their own chaos and infighting, they have repeatedly failed to deliver for the American people. They have wasted time and tax dollars on baseless investigations and divisive culture wars, dragging the American people with them down rabbit holes of conspiracies and untruths.

They throw tantrums when they can't get their way, ousting their last Speaker and, just last week, bringing all work in the House to a halt because their new Speaker had dared to try to strike a deal to keep the government open.

They put on dramatic acts of political theater, hoping to hide the fact that they are unable to complete the most basic tasks of governing. In 2023, they led the least productive session of Congress since the Great Depression.

We think the American people deserve better.

With that in mind, Mr. Speaker, let's look at the three bills that the House leadership has chosen to spend Congress' time on this week, and it is more of the same.

The first bill in this rule is the grotesquely misleading H. Res. 957, a resolution that repeats lies and distortions about the migration challenges at our southern border, starting with the title of the resolution and its false claim that this administration is promoting an open border. This is MAGA fiction, and it is an effort to keep campaigning on the fear of immigrants rather than any serious attempt to address the complex issues created by global migration forces and decades of congressional inaction.

It has become obvious that our Republican colleagues don't really want to fix our broken immigration system. They just want to campaign on it.

They have rejected--before even reading--the bipartisan solutions proposed by Senate Republicans, Democrats, and the administration.

They have refused to consider supplemental border funding requests from the President because the truth is they don't want solutions. They want political stunts. They want to rant, complain, blame, and campaign.

Immigration and border issues are complex. That is why they have remained on the table for so many years. They require comprehensive and nuanced policies, not acts of cruelty and dehumanization marked by barbed wire, family separation, or needless tragedies.

As we have seen over and over again, our Republican colleagues would rather use this issue to sow anger, division, and fear. They will use meaningless resolutions that do nothing to change the status quo, like this one, to distract from their failed Congress and their do-nothing agenda.

Mr. Speaker, if you want to see just how House Republicans view immigration and the border as a purely political issue, look no further than House leadership. After saying for months that border security is a crisis and just last month taking a field trip with over 60 House Republicans to the border, this week House leadership refused to even consider a bipartisan deal negotiated by the Senate before they have read it.

Mr. Speaker, you can't say that the border is in a state of emergency yet reject a bipartisan deal to address the crisis.

We can and must do better than this. Moreover, we owe it to our constituents and our country to work toward real, thoughtful solutions rather than partisan talking points like H. Res. 957.

Now, let's turn to H.R. 6914 and H.R. 6918. Supporting the health and well-being of mothers and babies should be something we can all agree upon, and we would welcome some real collaboration in that area.

Nonetheless, that is not what the majority has brought to the floor today. The fact is that both of these bills are designed to advance an extremist agenda to limit Americans' fundamental freedoms, particularly with respect to reproductive healthcare.

It is nothing but a political exercise that our Republican colleagues undertake every year on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade. It is designed to cater to the most extreme supporters as they descend on Washington, D.C., for an anti-abortion rally.

The fact is that the MAGA majority's anti-abortion agenda is wildly unpopular in this country. The vast majority of Americans do not support it, and they have proven that at the polls repeatedly in the last couple of years.

Americans do not want politicians and rightwing extremists undermining their freedom to make their own medical and reproductive healthcare choices based on their own individual circumstances.

In the face of the overwhelming and repeated rejection of these extremist attempts to interfere in private medical decisions, Republicans are now cloaking their efforts in family-friendly rhetoric and misleading talking points. So, it is important to dig a little deeper and see what these bills are and are not.

If my colleagues on the other side of the aisle really wanted to support pregnant women, children, and families, then they would work with us to address the shameful fact that maternal mortality in our country far exceeds that of our peers. Childbirth is dangerous here in the United States, particularly for Black women and their babies, not because we don't know how to support healthy outcomes but because of a lack of will or interest from Congress.

It is a full-blown crisis, but it doesn't have to be. When it comes to giving our kids brighter futures, we should be talking about powerful tools like the expanded child tax credit, which lifted millions of children out of poverty. We should be strengthening WIC and SNAP, nutrition programs that serve as lifelines for pregnant women, mothers, infants, and families. Instead, this MAGA majority has proposed deep cuts to these nutrition programs.

We should pass policies to improve access to high-quality childcare and early education services, nutritious food, comprehensive maternal and infant healthcare, stable housing, and family-sustaining jobs because those are the things that would really help our kids and families.

The policies that our Republican colleagues have brought before us today in these two bills do none of that.

In fact, they would actually divert money away from vulnerable families and ultimately endanger women's lives.

H.R. 6914 purports to be concerned with providing information to pregnant college students.

Of course, there are obvious and unique challenges to balancing school and parenting, although students and their families can thrive with the right support. Unfortunately, this bill doesn't actually provide such support.

Instead, it requires that colleges inform students only about the rights and resources for carrying a pregnancy to term--resources, I will add, for which this House majority has sought to dramatically slash funding.

The bill purposely leaves out any requirement for schools to distribute medically accurate information regarding all of the healthcare options available to pregnant women. If this bill were truly about ensuring that pregnant college students have the necessary information to make informed decisions to meet their unique reproductive healthcare needs, it would include information about contraception, abortion, miscarriages, and the services that might be available to them during their pregnancy and after.

If the underlying intent of this bill were not clear enough in its one-sided substance, we need only look to the alleged funding section of the bill, which would write into law completely unproven and even false anti-abortion talking points.

These are findings that the bill's author could provide no evidence to support when it was marked up in committee. However, don't take my word for it. Advocates dedicated to advancing civil rights and resources for pregnant and parenting students have expressed deep concerns about this bill, including groups that are experts on this issue like The Coalition For Pregnant and Parenting Students Advocacy.

It is obvious that this MAGA majority doesn't really care about educating and supporting pregnant and parenting students. Instead, they would rather leave them in the dark and attempt to deny women the freedom to make informed decisions about their own bodies and futures.

Lastly, I will talk about H.R. 6918, which is another example of House Republicans doubling down on an extreme and unpopular agenda to try to ban abortion care nationwide. This bill is cloaked in a title that most Americans would agree with, the Supporting Pregnant and Parenting Women and Families Act.

In fact, Congress has passed bipartisan legislation to do just that, including through TANF funding, the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families.

However, in recent years, there has been growing evidence and a raft of studies showing that critical TANF aid for families is being diverted to purposes not authorized by Congress.

One of the greatest causes of concern is the siphoning of Federal TANF taxpayer dollars to support so-called crisis pregnancy centers, most of which are part of a well-funded arm of the global anti-abortion movement.

There is a growing body of evidence that these crisis pregnancy centers use deceptive and coercive tactics to target vulnerable people facing unplanned pregnancies, and they often prevent them from accessing a full range of appropriate reproductive healthcare, including safe abortion care and contraceptives.

Just as this bill is cloaked in benign pro-family rhetoric, these pregnancy centers distribute diapers and formula in order to disguise their underlying anti-abortion mission.

One of the great dangers of these crisis pregnancy centers is that they present themselves as legitimate healthcare facilities, but the reality is that most are unlicensed, understaffed by medical professionals, and unbound by the privacy laws that govern medical providers.

This has led to women being misled and given inaccurate or even dangerous information about their pregnancies and the options for care that are available to them, including women who have suffered life- threatening undiagnosed complications in their pregnancies, women who have been denied the information and opportunity to access appropriate reproductive healthcare for them, and women who have been encouraged to undertake dangerous and medically contraindicated procedures.

There is strong evidence that many pregnancy centers are using the public money that States allocate to them through TANF for purposes that are not authorized by Congress. That is why last year, the Department of Health and Human Services issued a proposed regulation to better guide the States in what services were eligible for TANF funding, and that is why this bill, H.R. 6918, is so dangerous and dishonest.

When we have a growing mountain of evidence of misuse and even fraudulent use of TANF dollars by crisis pregnancy centers, this bill by its term would prevent the Department of Health and Human Services from any regulation of pregnancy crisis centers.

House Republicans would green light the unregulated use of public money to fund these anti-abortion facilities, many of which have been proven to promote false medical claims and misinformation; misrepresent their services as providing a full range of reproductive healthcare, despite having only anti-abortion services and usually lacking any medical personnel. Horrifyingly, they are unbound by HIPAA privacy restrictions, and some of these centers collect and distribute women's sensitive personal information to organizations within the larger anti- abortion movement.

This is what Republicans are trying to push upon American women with these bills, and I wholeheartedly disagree.

Thus, here we are. It is another week, and the House GOP still can't get their act together. Their majority is on track to become one of the most ineffective in modern history.

Again, we are just hours from a government shutdown, but instead of dealing with that or any of the real problems Americans are facing today, this House majority is desperately trying to mask its own failure with misleading rhetoric and bills that will never become law. It would be a joke if it weren't so serious.

Led by their most extreme Members, it is clear our Republican colleagues don't want to make Congress work better for the American people. They want to break it, and they want to campaign on it. They want to bring chaos to this Chamber and pass legislation that feeds the flames of their desperate culture wars.

It is irresponsible, it is reckless, and it is not what the American people want.

Mr. Speaker, I deeply oppose this rule, and I reserve the balance of my time.

We have heard from our colleagues over the course of debate on this bill that they think that they need more discretion to spend TANF dollars, but if this bill were to pass, a pregnancy center would be unregulated. That is what the bill literally says, We cannot regulate pregnancy crisis centers. So if they wanted to use TANF dollars to stage a Taylor Swift concert, they could because there is to be no regulation.

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Ms. SCANLON. Mr. Speaker, this report studies crisis pregnancy centers in Alaska, California, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington, Pennsylvania, and Minnesota. Overall, its findings show that crisis pregnancy centers provided virtually no medical care, promoted false medical claims, and used deceptive practices; State-funded crisis pregnancy centers are more harmful than privately-funded centers; and crisis pregnancy centers appear to be local, but are actually part of a global anti-abortion network.

It is clear that these sorts of manipulative and unregulated centers are not what is best for women and children's health, and actually have been proven to misuse Federal taxpayer dollars. We absolutely shouldn't be allowing Federal dollars to flow to them without any scrutiny.

6914.

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Ms. SCANLON. Mr. Speaker, this letter expresses concern that this bill is based upon unproven anti-abortion rhetoric and seeks to limit students' ability to make reproductive healthcare decisions with a full range of information.

It goes on to say that the bill does not contain any meaningful support to help pregnant and parenting students meet their educational goals, and it notes how the bill leaves out policies we know would actually make a difference, like strengthen Title IX protections, accessible childcare and early education, basic needs security, and accountability measures for institutions that fail to protect pregnant and parenting students.

Leger Fernandez), a distinguished member of the Rules Committee.

Ms. LEGER FERNANDEZ. Mr. Speaker, today's Republican bills are part of their extreme agenda to create a Federal abortion ban.

The first bill, H.R. 6918, would divert Federal funding used to help feed and house poor families and give it to anti-abortion centers.

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists warned that these centers often mislead women with false medical information and, in the process, endanger public health. It is really endangering women's health because across the country we are hearing stories of women who are dying or nearly dying because of these extreme restrictions on their healthcare.

The other bill, H.R. 6914, should be named the student anti-abortion bill and not the Pregnant Students Bill of Rights because the bill restricts pregnant students' rights when Republicans restrict access to information about the full range of healthcare available to pregnant students or the benefits that might help a pregnant woman and her child receive nutrition assistance or Medicaid benefits; benefits, I would point out, that Republicans oppose. They don't want our babies to be healthy.

Representative Stevens submitted an amendment to H.R. 6914 that would provide pregnant students information about miscarriages, a devastating loss that affects 1 million women in the U.S. each year. Shockingly, not a single Republican voted for this amendment to give students health information about miscarriages. In fact, Republicans opposed every Democratic amendment intended to make this bill more scientific and objective.

Last night, the chair of the Education and the Workforce Committee claimed this bill says absolutely nothing about abortion and was just a students' rights bill. A strange statement, since abortion is mentioned nine times in the bill.

``Mujeres,'' ``Women,'' don't let anyone fool you. Extreme Republicans want to keep us in the dark.

We need to keep Congress out of decisions that women deserve to make for themselves in doctors' offices on campuses and everywhere else women have healthcare needs.

Finally, the last bill on today's rule is a useless resolution that does absolutely nothing to help the problems at the border.

Resolutions like H.R. 957 that distort a real problem we are facing at the border and statements like we hear from President Trump that immigrants are poisoning the blood of our Nation are dangerous. They demonize all immigrants and lead to a rise in white supremacy and hate crimes, and they do nothing to solve our problems at the border.

Let me be clear. I want a secure and humane border. Democrats have put forth specific policies that address the root causes of migration, because the best way to stop the surge of migrants is to help them stay in their own countries. We have proposed funding and policy fixes for our broken immigration system, solutions that Republicans keep rejecting.

Instead, they provide a resolution that offers no solutions.

We need vision, and Republicans are only giving us division. Vision, not division, is what Democrats are about.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on the rule and on the bills.

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Ms. SCANLON. Mr. Speaker, could you please advise how much time is remaining?

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Ms. SCANLON. Mr. Speaker, if we defeat the previous question, I will offer an amendment to the rule to bring up H.R. 12, a bill that would ensure every American has full access to essential reproductive healthcare services, including abortion care.

Since the Dobbs decision, every State in the Union has taken action on abortion in some way. Many States have used it as an opportunity to enact laws that ban specific instances of abortion or abortion care entirely. Republicans have reiterated time and again that that is their goal, to ban abortion nationwide.

The abortion access landscape is deeply fractured, and Americans continue to face the devastating consequences of abortion bans and restrictions on both patients' health and the greater healthcare ecosystem.

H.R. 12 ensures every American has full access to vital reproductive healthcare and will stop the devastating health consequences for women when abortion access is banned or limited.

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Ms. SCANLON. Mr. Speaker, to discuss our proposal, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Massachusetts (Ms. Pressley).

This MAGA majority has a bleak and nihilistic vision of our government. It is a vision where congressional power is wielded to take down political rivals; to force extremist beliefs on every American, particularly women; and to shamelessly sow division and fear, not to actually serve all Americans.

It is a vision where the idea of working together across party lines on behalf of all Americans is so anathema to the Republican Party that it can cause a Speaker to lose his gavel or rank-and-file Members of Congress to lose their primaries. It is where standing up against lies and for the Constitution results in death threats and where the integrity and core values of our country's institutions are continually chipped away.

This is an unacceptable way to govern. It is not governance at all. Americans deserve so much better. Let's stop playing these ridiculous games and get to work on the work that the people sent us to do.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to oppose the previous question and the rule, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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Ms. SCANLON. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

The yeas and nays were ordered.

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