Congressional Black Caucus and the Affordable Care Act
Floor Speech
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Mr. MEEKS. I want to thank the gentle lady from the Virgin Islands. I also want to thank the gentle lady from Houston, Texas, Sheila Jackson Lee, for that excellent statement on the Constitution and the 14th and the Fifth Amendments.
I am so serious about this issue that on this night when I don't have much of a voice, it is important to talk about what is really going on here. When you think about the Constitution, the first thing that we were doing when we came back in the 112th was the reading of the Constitution. The Constitution was really put in place to help and protect Americans. It's one thing to read the Constitution. It's another thing to live the Constitution. I think the gentle lady put out the facts clearly down to the 14th and the Fifth Amendments, this is constitutional. I think it is also clearly what the Constitution, what the individuals who wrote in 1787, it was a committee of the Federal Convention, that it should remind us that the sacred text employs and empowers us to provide for and protect the American people.
What is the most precious thing that one has? Is it money? What is the most precious thing? It's called life. Without life, what do we have? And what is the most important thing in living a good life? It's health. So wouldn't it seem that what would be the most appropriate thing to do is that we provide health care for Americans? It is without question I think that we can agree, whether we're Democrat or Republican, we believe that we have the best country on the planet, in the history of the planet. But look at the blemish that history will record on our great Nation if we do not provide or give access to health care for all Americans. This is a struggle that we have had for debate after debate after debate, from President before President before President. And finally this Congress did come together in the 111th Congress and said, we're going to provide health care to 95 percent of all Americans. No, we're not perfect. The fact of the matter is I don't know any bill that has ever been passed in any legislative body that is perfect. We've got to work, and in fact we talk about our union, to make it a more better union. The health care reform bill clearly does that.
Now the logic to come and to repeal the whole bill confuses me. For even the Constitution of the United States of America was not a perfect document. Clearly for those of us who happen to be African Americans, when the Founding Fathers wrote it, they said we were only three-fifths of a human being. Clearly the Constitution didn't give women the right to vote. The document itself as it was initially written was flawed. But we as a Nation didn't say come and strike the entire Constitution; repeal the Constitution. That's not what was done. What we did was we said, Let's fix it. Let's look and see where we can agree upon to amend it. In fact, there was a small debate on the floor right here which Constitution would be read. Would it be the amended version? And that's what we talked about, the amended version of the Constitution. That's what was read here.
So where is the logic now where we clearly have the law of the land to come and say, get rid of it all? You've clearly heard from the gentleman from Georgia and the others that have spoken this evening about making sure that there is no individual who's denied health care because of a preexisting condition. This bill assures us of that. If you have a child under 26 years of age, not working, they can stay on their parents' health care. Seniors and the doughnut hole, we fixed that.
So if you've got a serious problem that you want to negotiate and talk about that's within this bill that's a problem, that's a flaw, that needs to be amended, then I think that as a body we can sit down and work together to get that done.
And so I say when I look at where we are, or ask my staff, for example, in my little district in New York, the Sixth Congressional District.
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