Medical Preparedness Allowable Use Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. BILIRAKIS. I must say, Madam Chair, you are doing an outstanding job chairing this committee. Thank you for your help on this bill. I also want to thank Mr. Payne. Your father would be very proud of you today. He was a good friend of mine.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 1791, the Medical Preparedness Allowable Use Act, which amends the Homeland Security Act of 2002 to make it clear that grant funds under the State Homeland Security Grant Program and the Urban Area Security Initiative may be used to enhance medical preparedness and purchase medical countermeasures.

I originally introduced the Medical Preparedness Allowable Use Act in 2012 after a series of hearings on medical countermeasures in the Committee on Homeland Security's Subcommittee on Emergency Preparedness, Response, and Communications.

At these hearings, we received testimony from representatives of the emergency response community on the importance of stockpiling medical countermeasures in the event of a WMD attack. This includes pre-deployed medical kits for first responders and their families similar to those provided to postal workers participating in the national U.S. Postal Medical Countermeasures Dispensing Pilot Program.

The grant guidance for the State Homeland Security Grant Program and the Urban Area Security Initiative currently permits this funding to be used to procure medical countermeasures and for other medical preparedness and medical surge capacity equipment and activities. However, this guidance is developed on an annual basis, as our chair said, and there is no guarantee that these uses will be authorized in the future. That is why this bill is so very important.

To be clear, no new funding is authorized in this bill. However, these expenditures authorized and codified by the bill we are considering today can make a big difference in the protection of the public, including emergency responders, in the event of an attack, and there should be no doubt that grant funding may be used to support them now and in the future.

As the former chairman of the Subcommittee on Emergency Preparedness, Response, and Communications, I consistently find myself in awe of our first responders and the sacrifices that they make for the public. In the wake of events such as Hurricane Sandy, I am committed to ensuring Congress does all that it can to support those brave men and women.

I am pleased that this legislation is supported by the Emergency Services Coalition on Medical Preparedness, which works to ensure that we ``protect the protectors,'' and other agencies as well. I also thank the ranking member for adding that great amendment because we must protect our children as well.

I thank and commend, of course, Representative Susan Brooks, our chair, for her assistance with this bill and for her willingness to join me as an original cosponsor.

I urge all Members to support this great, very important bill.

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