Providing Amounts for Further Expenses of the Committee on Energy and Commerce in the One Hundred Fourteenth Congress

Floor Speech

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Mr. KILDEE. Madam Speaker, I thank my friend and colleague for her leadership and for yielding.

Let's just be clear. We know what this is. This is yet another attempt to fund with Federal taxpayer dollars a Republican messaging effort to attack Planned Parenthood.

More than 2.5 million people--2.5 million women--every year rely on Planned Parenthood for lifesaving cancer screenings and for other health services. We have important legislative work to do, and we ought not be using taxpayer dollars to fund this effort which has clearly been described in all sorts of lofty tones but is essentially a political witch hunt after an organization that provides essential services to women.

The majority cannot deny the chilling effect that this effort has had on medical research. It has already been revealed that this is also an attack on stem cell research. You just have to listen to the debate.

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Mr. KILDEE. We need to make sure that we are pursuing scientific research to fight diseases like diabetes, like Alzheimer's, and like multiple sclerosis, a disease my wife, Jennifer, has been fighting for 18 years.

We are one of those families that, when we hear about medical research and we hear about stem cell research, in particular, our ears perk up because we know there is hope in that research.

This effort--no matter what anybody wants to say, it is well documented--has had a chilling effect on that medical research, and we ought to shut this down.

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