Fairness For Breastfeeding Mothers Act of 2017

Mr. Speaker, I thank my good friend from Georgia for yielding. I certainly thank him for being a cosponsor of my bill.

I should start, however, by thanking Chairman Shuster, and Ranking Member DeFazio, who have moved this bill so quickly.

The bill is called the Fairness for Breastfeeding Mothers Act of 2017. This is a real motherhood bill. Mr. DeFazio, Mr. Johnson, and Barbara Comstock have all joined me as cosponsors.

H.R. 1174 requires locations that are either federally owned or leased to provide designated private and hygenic lactation space for nursing mothers. As I will indicate, no new space in buildings or expenditures is contemplated.

Last Congress, I offered this bill as an amendment to the Public Buildings Reform and Savings Act of 2016, and I was pleased to have it pass the House.

Space for lactating women is already required for Federal employees. We are really not talking about a new kind of benefit. Certainly, there is no new money. The reason that this is not new is because Federal employees already have lactating space under the Affordable Care Act.

So I have to ask my good friends on the other side: As you try to repeal the Affordable Care Act, do you propose to erase this motherhood provision as well? Will you preserve it?

My bill extends the lactating space requirement to include not just employees, but visitors and guests of Federal facilities across the Nation. H.R. 1174 also does not require additional Federal funds or space to be mandated at all. Since Federal employees already have this space, I look forward to visitors to Federal buildings also making use of this space. In our country, new mothers often come to visit Federal buildings, not only those who work in Federal buildings.

The reason this is such an important bill is that the benefits of breast milk are so well documented: antibodies and hormones that boost babies' immune systems, lower risks of asthma, diabetes, respiratory infections, and other diseases among breastfed babies.

There are benefits also for nursing mothers. Research has shown that there are lower risks of diabetes and even cancer as a result of breastfeeding. Speaking of motherhood, the Republican healthcare plan would even make maternity care significantly more expensive.

Now, this, of course, is a bill that is very easy to support, but when we think of its links to other important legislation, I ask that there be sincere consideration given to whether or not at this moment in time my good friends across the aisle want their legacy to be: We actually repealed your health care.

I don't think they are going to be able to do it.

My Republican friends have no experience with structural reform. If you look at all the structural reform in our country, beginning with the New Deal, none of it was done by Republicans. Whether you are talking about the administrative agencies that are so important to all that we do in this country, Medicare, Medicaid, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, whatever you have in mind, these are structural reforms that Republicans

have, if anything, opposed, as they opposed Social Security, for example.

So here what they are trying to do is to unravel, take away health care, and then put something in its place. They have no experience doing anything like it. Anybody who has looked closely at it has to doubt, as I do, that they can do it.

Look what they will be doing. In my own district, the District of Columbia, we have cut in half the rate of uninsured.

Are Republicans going to give me a guarantee that that cut will remain if they replace the bill with the markup that is going on as we speak?

Ninety-six percent of District of Columbia residents have health coverage today. That is comparable to other advanced countries in the world. As we know, most countries in the world already afford this kind of coverage. That makes the District, according to whoever is doing the counting, number one, number two, or number three in the Nation in health care provided to our residents. I am very proud of that. I am going to fight like mad to keep it.

Mr. Speaker, many of us had healthcare townhalls over the recess. We saw what happened at the townhalls on affordable care that my good friends on the other side also had. They met a revolution from their own constituents. We didn't have that problem in our townhalls. Some of the stories that residents brought forward are truly heartbreaking, so I want to leave you with one.

A woman who came to testify at my healthcare townhall, her name is Markita. Markita's grandmother was a D.C. Public Schools cafeteria worker for most of her career. She retired early. She retired before she had Social Security or Medicare. She was suffering from diabetes and a stroke, but she was so prideful that she never let anyone know that she had to slice her pills in half just to get by. Now she is under the protection of the Affordable Care Act. Markita's grandmother is healthier and can afford her medication. She is no longer splitting her pills in half.

Mr. Speaker, I wanted to correct the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Sanford), who opined that this bill was not scored correctly.

We are talking about space already designated for Federal employees. The intent of the bill, and I am the author of the bill, which could never have gotten through committee if it involved the expenditure of funds. Yes, sometimes these lactation rooms will be dedicated to lactation, but that doesn't mean they are exclusively designated to lactation.

And the whole notion that some Federal buildings don't have such space means they are in violation of the Affordable Care Act, which requires that they have such space, even if it is not space that is exclusively used for the few women who are lactating or nursing.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 1174, the Fairness for Breastfeeding Mothers Act of 2017, introduced by my good friend, Eleanor Holmes Norton. I am pleased to be an original cosponsor of this legislation.

Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as she may consume to the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia (Ms. Norton).

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

What happened 43, 44 years ago during the Watergate hearings with that seminal question that everyone keeps asking, ``What did the President know, and when did he know it?'' and in the words of Yogi Berra: ``It's deja vu all over again.''

People are asking that question today, and it rings more loudly today than it did back then in 1973, 1974, ``What did the President know, and when did he know it?'' about a lot of issues.

But this issue of the Affordable Care Act and whether or not you are going to repeal it and replace it with something better or you are going to repeal and replace it with something worse, what did the President know, and when did he know it?

Because it is clear now to everybody who has had the opportunity to look at this offering that the Republicans have put forward, you are going to be worse off today than you were when the Affordable Care Act was implemented because 20 million of the 30 million people who are on coverage now will be off coverage if this thing passes.

This Fairness for Breastfeeding Mothers Act of 2017, which was introduced by my colleague and friend, Congresswoman Norton, which I am so pleased to be a cosponsor of, is a bill from a mother herself who knows the needs of other mothers. This is bipartisan. I am so happy that this bill is passing today, but I will tell you, I can't help but think of the 20 million people who are going to lose their coverage. A lot of those people are women and children, even some babies. They are going to lose coverage because the Republicans are kicking them off under their plan. They will be a healthy part of that 20 million people who lose their coverage. It is unfair. It is not right. It is un- American.

Mr. Speaker, how much time is remaining on my side?

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Sanford), my friend, opposes the bill because the CBO scoring process, which came up with a no-cost estimate for this bill, the contention is that that CBO study was insufficient. Well, I am sure that my colleague and friend from South Carolina will agree with me that with no CBO scoring for this congressional Republican healthcare repeal bill that they have put forward, then we are certainly not in a position to proceed further with a fast-track legislating process, as this bill seems to be on. They are going to mark it up with no hearings.

When we were dealing with the Affordable Care Act, we held 79 hearings over 2 years, heard from 181 witnesses from both sides of the aisle, and posted the bill online for 30 days. The CBO scoring actually showed that this bill was going to save money, as opposed to cost.

Mr. Speaker, I ask my colleague from South Carolina to be in opposition to his own party's healthcare repeal bill.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the kind gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Kennedy), my friend.

Mr. Speaker, I was looking at my congressional calendar, and I noticed that this year we are working in Washington, D.C., more than we have under the past 5 years of the rein of the Republicans. We have been the most do-nothingest Congresses on record for many years, and so this year we will be working. But I am baffled as to whether or not it is because the Republicans don't want to go home and face their constituents in a townhall meeting about the Affordable Care Act repeal bill that they have filed. We will be here in session now for another 4 weeks before the public has a chance to hear from their Representative when they return home for an extended time. But on the flip side, that gives everybody time to prepare for those upcoming townhall meetings which need to be held to explain what they are trying to do to the American people.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms. Schakowsky), my friend.

Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 1 minute to the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia (Ms. Norton).

Mr. Speaker, I have one more point that I needed to make about this abolition, this abolishment of the Affordable Care Act plan that has been submitted. A foundation of their plan is the demise of the individual mandate that requires people to purchase insurance, so they are claiming that that is a matter of freedom.

Well, the fact is that when everyone is required to have insurance, it reduces the cost for everyone else. So it was a cost-saving measure that has worked with the rise in premiums being at the lowest level in decades. The affordable care has worked to cut the cost of health care.

But what they are doing when they abolish that individual mandate is they are also going to penalize people who decide to drop their coverage and pick

it up later. Or if you miss one payment because you missed work, missed a paycheck or something like that, you missed 1 month and have to reinstate, then you are going to pay a 30 percent penalty on your insurance. That is highway robbery.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to support H.R. 1174, the Fairness for Breastfeeding Mothers Act. I thank my colleague for introducing it. It was unanimously supported--thank you, Mr. Chairman--in committee and in full committee. As expected, it is going through because people understand this is a commonsense bill, so I am happy to support this once again.

I know you were discussing H.R. 375 earlier. I did want to return to the bill to designate the Federal building and courthouse in Nashville, Tennessee, to my good friend, Fred D. Thompson. That building will now be named after him appropriately.

Fred Thompson was a larger-than-life character, a true patriot, and a great wit who believed in and lived the American Dream in starring roles on stage, screen, and national politics. He served as a Senator for 8 years, and then later he ran for President. Originally he was here in Congress serving as a counsel where, of course, we had that famous line: ``What did the President know, and when did he know it?'' That was a line that he was well known for.

What he was also often not given credit for was what a profoundly good lawyer he was. He had come to the attention of people in Tennessee by Lamar Alexander when Howard Baker came and asked now-Senator Lamar Alexander to take a role in the Watergate hearings, he said: No; you want to have Fred Thompson there. He asked his friend Fred Thompson to come and serve in that role.

Fred then became an actor because when they went to write a movie about a woman who had been dealing with corruption in Tennessee politics, and Fred had been her lawyer, they couldn't find someone to play Fred, and they came and asked him: Could you play yourself? He said: Well, I guess I could. That is how he became a character actor and a larger-than-life character there. Some of his famous lines there: ``Stack `em, pack `em, and rack `em.'' In ``Die Hard'' I believe that one was.

In movies, he starred with Paul Newman, Tom Cruise, Clint Eastwood, Gene Hackman, Robert Duvall, Bruce Willis, Sissy Spacek, and so many others. After he came here to the Senate, he humorously said: ``I often long for the realism and sincerity of Hollywood.'' So this is somebody who took his job very seriously but never took himself seriously and continued to have that great wit.

My husband and I were very privileged to know him and learn from him and spend many a good day and delightful time and evening with him and his wife, Jeri, his family, his children, and his many friends and admirers. We are so grateful for and appreciate his celebrated service and justly celebrated service to our country. This building will be a great memorial in a State that still very much reveres him.

I was privileged to be able to attend his service where hundreds and hundreds of people from Tennessee came to honor him, from country singers to people who stood by the side of the road as we drove to his funeral service, saluting him and thanking him for his service. This is somebody who in today's politics is sorely missed by all of us, and certainly most by his many friends, his family, and his scores of fans. God bless the Honorable Fred Thompson.

I thank you, Mr. Chairman, for this opportunity to be able to have this building now be a legacy to his great service and being a great attorney and lawyer for this country.

I thank the chairman for yielding to me.

Mr. Speaker, I rise with the greatest respect for my colleague from the District of Columbia and her passion on this subject and the bill that she has introduced. I rise with equal respect for my colleague, Chairman Barletta, and the way in which he has walked this bill through the process, but I am going to oppose this bill. I am going to do so on the basis of process. I thought it important to explain why, given, I think, the amount of energy that has gone into the bill and the fact that I wasn't able to voice a vote against it when it was voice voted at the committee level.

I do so because I think that blank checks rarely work out well for the

taxpayer. In fairness to the bill, it is not a blank check. The bill is actually prescribed in three different ways--the way in which it will impact Federal buildings. My problem, though, is on methodology in that the General Services Administration that ultimately gave the numbers to the CBO on which they base their score did not get in final form how many Federal buildings we are talking about. I think that leaves, therefore, something of an open end as to what this bill will ultimately cost; and that then goes to impact the very children for whom the breastfeeding will take place.

A child born in America today is going to inherit a giant liability from the Federal Government in terms of the cost of our Federal Government. By accountants from both the left and the right, they have said what we have in place is not sustainable. Therefore, I think it is very important, from a process standpoint, that we look at a final form number on any of these bills that we throw out and we prescribe, regardless of, again, how well-meaning they are and how measured they are, which is certainly the case with this bill.

I wanted to stand to give a quick explanation. I thank the gentleman for the time.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Last Thursday, I was wandering the Capitol searching for the Republican's secret repeal bill. We went from room to room, and it wasn't there. But now that I have seen it, I understand why they would want to hide it.

Even if we can all agree that we need to make health care more affordable and more accessible, this bill is not the solution. In fact, this bill will only make things worse.

The Republican repeal bill gives tax breaks to the rich. We are talking about over $600 billion overall, while taking away health coverage from millions of Americans. The Republican repeal bill will drastically increase the cost of health insurance for millions of Americans, with the biggest increase for seniors and for working families.

It would radically change the Medicaid program, slashing funding, and covering fewer people.

The Republican repeal bill will force Governors and State legislators to ration care. My Republican Governor weighed in now and said that it would be trouble for Illinois if Medicaid is cut back.

Who do they want to cut out? Children, the elderly, people with disabilities. Thousands of hardworking individuals in Illinois will lose access to health coverage. As I said, in fact, Republican Governor Bruce Rauner said that our State ``won't do very well'' if the Republican repeal bill becomes law.

The Republican repeal bill breaks the promise made by President Trump to cover more Americans at lower cost.

I oppose this bill. I am going to fight tooth and nail to protect our care. And, frankly, I think this bill, as my mother would say, is deader than a door nail.