Providing for Consideration of H.R. Prohibiting Voting By Noncitizens in District of Columbia Elections; Providing for Consideration of H.R. District of Columbia Federal Immigration Compliance Act of Providing for Consideration of H.R. Protecting Our Nation's Capital Emergency Act; and Providing for Consideration of S. Halt All Lethal Trafficking of Fentanyl Act

Floor Speech

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Ms. SIMON. Mr. Speaker, as a new Member of Congress, I was under the understanding that our job here is to lift up the voices of those in this country that hold our Nation together with their own hands: The working parents who will absolutely go hungry and will come home to empty refrigerators when their SNAP benefits are cut under the majority's big, cruel bill. Then there are those who cannot sleep at night because their child has a rare form of cancer and are worried about Medicaid not covering their care.

The Republicans say it won't affect her. Today, if you go to the children's hospital here in Washington, D.C., and sit with the mother who is praying over her dying child, who had to quit her job and who now qualifies for Medicaid expansion, under their bill she will be cut. Tell her you will not harm her.

Unfortunately, this is the America that the majority wants to create. The majority has sent a bill to the Senate that, Mr. Speaker, is not a piece of legislation. It is a piece of forgetting.

It is forgetting who we are, and it is forgetting who we owe. The big, cruel bill breaks the basic covenant of government that the people who suffer the most should be seen first.

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Ms. SIMON. It is without apology that when you write legislation that cuts into the flesh of the working poor, you cannot call it policy. When you cut into the flesh of working-class Americans, you don't call it policy. You call it what it is: cruelty. When you kick 16 million people off of healthcare, you don't call it policy. You call it heartless.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues today to vote ``no'' on the previous question.

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