Agriculture Reform, Food, and Jobs Act of 2013
Floor Speech
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Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Madam President, reserving the right to object, and I will, in fact, but I want to first discuss the resolution that now for the third time essentially has been brought to this body, and I am here to speak and object for a third time but not out of disagreement with the basic goal that has been well articulated by my friend from Pennsylvania.
I think I am quoting him directly from his remarks just now in saying that the goal is to do a lot more to ensure that the laws violated by Kermit Gosnell are vigorously enforced. I am here to say, yes, let's condemn the kinds of practices that resulted in the conviction of Kermit Gosnell and his sentence, in effect, to life in prison. Let's do more to ensure that laws are vigorously enforced that protect innocent patients in any setting, whether it is a doctor's office, a hospital, or a nursing home; whether it is by a nurse, a doctor, or another kind of caregiver, or by a vicious, conscienceless practitioner like Kermit Gosnell.
Let's stop this kind of despicable medical conduct even if it may be only a tiny fraction of all the caregiving that occurs in the United States by an even tinier fraction of a great and noble profession, by extraordinarily experienced and expert members of our medical profession.
We need to talk about all of the kinds of malpractice and criminal misconduct that can cause death or injury or the threat of death or injury.
We ought to be equally outraged by the doctors and the nurses in States such as, for example, hospitals and nursing homes in both New Jersey and Pennsylvania--in 2006, a nurse was sentenced to multiple life sentences for killing at least 29 patients by intentionally overdosing them with medication. There was simply no justification for those actions, and they are equally as heinous and unforgivable as the crimes that resulted in the conviction of Kermit Gosnell.
We need to talk about the nurse who was charged with killing 10 patients in a hospital in Texas by injecting them with a medication to stop their breathing. She pleaded no contest and is now serving life in prison.
I want this body to adopt a resolution that addresses those kinds of lapses in basic decency, ethics, and morality, as well as law.
We ought to be talking about the doctor who worked in hospitals in seven States--New Hampshire, Kansas, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Michigan, New York, Georgia--and exposed almost 8,000 patients to hepatitis C. He knowingly injected patients with his own infected blood and exposed them to a life-threatening disease.
The resolution I am going to ask this body to adopt speaks to those violations of trust, decency, and law.
In this place, I have talked about other similar violations--the Oklahoma dentist who exposed as many as 7,000 patients to HIV and hepatitis B and C through unsanitary practices. In Nevada, practitioners at an endoscopy center exposed 40,000 patients to hepatitis C through their unsanitary practices, and it went on for years.
My resolution speaks to those basic violations of trust and morality.
Kermit Gosnell's case has run its course. Our criminal justice system has done its work.
I have a resolution, and I ask unanimous consent that it be adopted.
I ask unanimous consent that the HELP Committee be discharged from further consideration of S. Res. 134 and that the Senate proceed to its consideration; that the resolution be agreed to, the Blumenthal amendment to the preamble, which is at the desk, be agreed to, the preamble, as amended, be agreed to, and the motion to reconsider be laid on the table, with no intervening action or debate.
I object to the resolution offered by my colleague from Pennsylvania and ask him and my colleagues to join me in support of this alternative resolution.
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