Providing for Consideration of H.R. Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2024

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Ms. SCANLON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Texas for yielding the customary 30 minutes, and I yield myself such time as I may consume.

For the past 6 months, the Republican majority, embroiled in chaos and dysfunction, has wasted valuable time. Because they are unable to perform the most basic job of Congress, working with Representatives from both parties and across the country to fund the government, they have brought us to the brink of a shutdown twice in the last 2 months.

Before that, they threatened to tank the global economy, and if their proposals pass this week, we will likely face new shutdown threats again in the new year.

This isn't serious governance. It is not serious or governance at all. They are playing politics with Americans' lives and our country's future.

It is outrageous that my constituents are yet again subjected to the uncertainty and fear that their paychecks won't come next week and that services they rely upon, like LIHEAP and WIC, will be interrupted. House Republicans still refuse to come to the table where the majority of the American people are and work with us in a bipartisan way to pass the spending bills that Americans expect and deserve.

The Senate is doing it. Why can't the House?

Instead, House Republicans continue to try to force the entire country to go along with their farcical and extremist approach to government funding. Unsurprisingly, they continue to fail, over and over again, on the House floor. Their proposals are so extreme that Members of their own party won't even vote for them. The MAGA majority may have new leadership, but it is the same old story.

They plan to kick the government funding can down the road, once again, so they can try to pass all 12 spending bills, which are now 2 months overdue, that cater to the most extreme and noisy fringe of the MAGA party.

These are bills that reject any bipartisan input, bills that contain harmful spending cuts that violate the Fiscal Responsibility Act's spending levels that were approved on a bipartisan basis and signed into law last spring, and these bills include poison pill policy riders to enshrine MAGA culture wars into law and force these extremist views upon every American.

There is no clearer example of that than the unacceptable spending bill they have brought to the House floor today.

The Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education appropriations bill is supposed to help Americans access education, jobs, and healthcare. These are the foundations of our constituents' lives and livelihoods.

Mr. Speaker, I don't know about you, but they are three of the issues that I hear about the most when I have the opportunity to be back home rather than debating meaningless bills and amendments here on the House floor. Yet the majority has proposed legislation that slashes funding for existing programs supporting these parts of Americans' lives by a shocking 28 percent across the board, back to 2008 spending levels with even deeper cuts in certain critical areas.

Let me outline what these cuts will mean for Americans.

Mr. Speaker, our public schools are responsible for educating the next generation of Americans: our civic leaders, our innovators, and our taxpayers. They are the key to our country's present and its future. However, this bill seeks to further efforts of MAGA extremists to undermine our public school systems by ripping critical funding away from the K-12 schools that need it the most.

This bill slashes billions--that is billions with a b; 80 percent-- from title I, the foundational Federal program that for over five decades has helped schools ensure that low-income students have access to a high-quality, well-rounded education to equip them for what lies ahead.

These cuts will be devastating for the children who live in my district, which houses one of the largest public school districts in the country. Hundreds of millions of dollars in funding will be slashed from Philadelphia public schools.

Thousands of teachers will lose their jobs, but it is not just my district that will suffer. It is everyone's. Mr. Speaker, Virginia's Sixth District will lose $23 million in title I funding. Mr. Burgess' district, Texas 26, will lose $22 million. That is over 300 teachers that will lose their jobs in each of those districts.

I challenge any of my colleagues to explain to the teachers and families in their districts how they can support a bill that cuts millions of dollars and hundreds of teachers from their local public schools, particularly at a time when our children need extra help.

Members of Congress who vote for this proposal will be telling kids and families clearly and cruelly that where they live or how much money their parents make is the measure of whether they are worthy of a good education and future success. That is un-American.

In addition to title I cuts, this bill also eliminates--not cuts, eliminates--funding for programs that support English language learning, academic achievement, professional development for educators, and the emotional and mental health of our students.

In this bill, MAGA Republicans are going after preschool by slashing hundreds of millions of dollars from Head Start, which has been proven to provide young children with a critical early learning foundation that sets them up for lifelong success and saves taxpayers dollars down the road.

I want so much better than what is in this bill for our children, and I find it deeply disturbing that my Republican colleagues don't feel the same.

Early childhood and K-12 education aren't the only things on the House Republicans' chopping block. With this bill, they are also abandoning college students and hardworking people trying to improve their lives and their futures through higher education and job training.

This bill would eliminate the Federal Work-Study Program for hundreds of thousands of hardworking students who use it to pay for a higher education.

It would block regulations to implement income-based student loan repayment programs, and this bill would rip need-based financial aid away from over a million students. Consequently, it will be harder for people from working families to get a degree, and it will stifle their potential earnings and opportunities in the job market.

This bill also leaves behind Americans who want to work, who want to access job training, or want to find a higher paying job to better support themselves and their families. When employers across this country are scrambling to find qualified job candidates, House Republicans are defunding the programs that prepare Americans for the 21st century workforce.

The bill they have proposed eliminates job training for over half a million Americans, the WIOA programs, youth job training, adult job training, and employment programs for seniors.

The bill also cuts over a billion dollars from critical worker protection agencies at the Department of Labor, including programs that ensure worker safety and promote equality and economic security for working women.

Every day, I see how my district's dozens of higher education institutions, including community colleges, bring innovation and prosperous futures to our region, but House Republicans' shortsighted vision for our country undermines these accomplishments and jeopardizes the strength of our workforce for generations to come.

Finally, the majority is using this bill to come after programs that support Americans' health, safety, and well-being. My district and the whole Philadelphia region is a hub for biomedical innovation, but the bill before us would undercut this lifesaving work by slashing funding for cancer and neurological research. Programs that help us fight public health crises, like opioid misuse and HIV/AIDS, will be eliminated.

As grieving Americans everywhere call out for action to bring an end to senseless gun violence, MAGA Republicans in the House, rather than answer these calls, want to eliminate funding for research on how to keep communities safe from firearms, now the leading cause of death for American children.

This bill also puts women's and children's health at risk. At a time when the U.S. lags far behind all other developed countries in addressing maternal mortality--not for lack of will and resources--and outcomes for mothers, but particularly women of color, are getting worse, this bill cuts hundreds of millions of dollars in funding for programs that support safe pregnancies, healthy babies, and affordable access to contraception and a full range of reproductive healthcare.

Of course, this bill also includes a toxic stew of unpopular, extremist policy riders, yet another example of rightwing lawmakers pushing their extreme agenda to ban abortion care nationwide.

This is a terrible bill, and the House majority knows it. It has been dictated by its most extreme Members. It couldn't even survive a committee markup. Therefore, the party that preaches regular order has sent it straight to the floor. On the way, with no committee input, this bill acquired additional policy riders, and no one in the Rules Committee could explain last night how they got in there since they didn't happen in committee.

This bill is so extreme it may have to be pulled from the floor, like the two bills that preceded it last week, because it cannot win enough votes even from the House Republican Conference. If it does pass the House, it will not pass the Senate or be able to overcome a White House veto.

The appropriations legislation that House Republicans have put in front of us today does nothing to invest in Americans or America's future. Instead, it slashes programs and support for children, families, workers, and women. It is a cruel vision for our country as House Republicans continue to worship at the shrine of trickle-down economics, despite its failure for half a century. Instead of making wealthy corporations and billionaires pay their fair share, they would rather balance the budget on the backs of kids and hardworking families, and undermine the U.S.' global reputation, credit rating, and national security.

Americans, my constituents, are fed up. The people who send all of us to Washington do so with a belief that we will work and fight to make their and their families' lives better, but it seems too many of the MAGA Republicans in the House aren't interested in keeping up their end of that bargain. This bill doesn't live up to the promises I have made to my constituents, and I absolutely can't support it.

The fact remains that under Democratic leadership, the House did pass budget bills. It passed the actual bills. What we are seeing here is a string of MAGA bills being brought to the floor and not passing and not leading to an eventual budget, so we keep ending up in this Mobius loop of potential shutdowns. The bills that we have seen so far will not result in a budget.

Mr. Speaker, if we defeat the previous question, I will offer an amendment to the rule to make in order amendment No. 81, offered by Ranking Member DeLauro from the Appropriations Committee, which strikes section 239 of the bill, which prohibits funding to Planned Parenthood and other similar women's health organizations.

Mr. Speaker, when will Republicans in the House learn? The American people want them to stop trying to tell women what they can do with their bodies. At the ballot box, in Congress, in State legislatures, women want them to stop. Republican politicians have no place dictating decisions about women's reproductive health. These decisions should be made between a woman and her doctor.

This MAGA messaging bill callously prohibits funding to an organization that provides many different health resources to women across the country. I, myself, used Planned Parenthood when planning my family. Planned Parenthood also offers vulnerable communities services they wouldn't otherwise have access to, including critical preventive services like breast and cervical cancer screenings, contraception, and sex education. Simply put, blocking this grant funding endangers women's health across the country. There is no reason we should restrict access to Federal grant money simply to score political points for the MAGA base while limiting reproductive healthcare options.

Mr. Speaker, as I said before, this is a terrible bill. I remind all my colleagues that this is kids' futures that we are talking about. It is the jobs that support American families. It is the health and safety of our loved ones.

If the House's MAGA Republicans had their way, our workers, students, children, women, and families would all suffer if the cuts in this bill were implemented. Our public schools, the centerpieces of our communities and our democracy, would be decimated. Hardworking people would be underwater, unable to find good-paying jobs to keep themselves and their families afloat. Devastating diseases would go uncured and unchecked, and women would be denied the right to make their own free choices about their own healthcare.

America and the people who live here are worth investing in so much more than this, and I won't accept the bleak and nihilistic picture that House Republicans are trying to paint. Our country's future can and should be brighter. It is what our constituents and our children deserve.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to oppose the previous question and the rule, and I yield back the balance of my time.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Ms. SCANLON. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

The yeas and nays were ordered.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source