Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, 5 years ago, I got the phone call everyone dreads. My wife had collapsed at work and was being rushed to an emergency room. It is a moment that is painfully familiar to far too many. Time stops. You fight to push your breath down your throat. Your brain gets stuck in that highlight reel of worst-case scenarios. You are terrified.

Fortunately, we were among the lucky ones. Lauren was okay. Most critically, our health coverage gave us the support that we needed to be able to focus on the one thing that mattered most, her recovery.

For families in America, that is the simple expectation of our country's healthcare system, a commitment that our society makes to care for one another in our time of deepest need because our health is our great equalizer.

No matter your power or privilege, no one among us escapes our time here on Earth without watching someone we love fight for their life. So we fortify this social contract, not just out of sympathy for the suffering, but so that it is there for us, too, when we need its sturdy brace.

``Blessed are the merciful, for they shall be shown mercy.''

Mr. Speaker, a few months ago, a woman from my district walked into my office and told me about her daughter, a young lady diagnosed with acute mental illness at just 4 years of age.

A decade later, the stories that that young mom shared would split your heart: stories of countless ER visits, endless fights with insurers and courts,

a little girl being boarded at a hospital for 21 days while they searched up and down the East Coast to find a bed where she could stay.

At 14 years old, she has now spent half of her life in residential care. But it was how her mother ended that story that has stuck with me. She looked me in the eyes and told me that: ``Compared to other people I know, we have been lucky.''

Mr. Speaker, that is not luck. This is a mental health system so broken that it is hard to recognize.

And how have our Republican colleagues followed up in response? They have offered a piece of legislation that is one of the largest assaults on our mental health system in recent history.

The GOP repeal bill will remove guaranteed behavioral health coverage for everyone covered under the Medicaid expansion. It will abandon those suffering from substance abuse disorder to fend for themselves in a country ravaged by opioid abuse. It will allow work requirements for care, forcing countless people to somehow choose between getting treatment and keeping their job. It will help insurers further skirt parity laws that require them to treat the mentally ill fairly. It will send out-of-pocket costs soaring for the most vulnerable among us.

Mr. Speaker, one in five Americans today suffer from mental illness. These brave men and women and their families that love them deserve more than the cheap luck of a broken system. They deserve more than the empty rhetoric of a bill that ``might'' cover or ``could'' cover the care that they need. They deserve an ironclad commitment from their government that we will have their back. This bill does not do that.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for adding her voice on such an important issue before our country today and for leading our efforts here this afternoon on the House floor.

There are an awful lot of important components to this bill that we are debating now and that will supposedly come before us tomorrow afternoon. One of the critical pieces of it is how we are going to treat people suffering from mental illness.

Now, the bill itself does a number of things across insurance marketplaces and across Medicaid and Medicaid expansion, but I think it is critically important that we look at this through the framework of what health care is supposed to be all about. Health care, at least from my understanding, boils down to one simple principle. It is how we treat each other in our time of need and this commitment that we make as a country to each other, that, yes, I care about you and your family and want to make sure that you get the care that you need when you need it. Because with health care, at some point, I am going to need that same care as well: a loved one of mine, my children, my family members, and I hope that you would be there for me the same way that I would be there for you.

So if you look at this bill through that prism, one of the pieces that stands out is the fact that, for the Medicaid expansion population, about 11 million people across our country, this bill strips what is called the essential healthcare benefits from those 11 million people. Now, that is a bureaucratic term, but it means some of the most basic aspects of health care: maternal care and newborn care, preventive services, wellness, ambulatory care, and, yes, mental health services and addiction, behavioral health.

So what does that actually mean? It means that because of existing legislation, the Federal law, mental health parity, which says that if mental health benefits are, in fact, offered as part of a healthcare package, insurance package, that it has to be offered in the same way that physical health care is. You should treat your access to behavioral health care the same way we would treat access to health care if you needed cancer treatment or a broken leg. But the mental health parity law does not require mental health benefits to be offered at all. The Affordable Care Act, however, says that in order for a plan to be qualified, it does have to offer an essential health benefits package, included in that being access to mental health care.

So those two laws together work in tandem to have created a massive increase in access to behavioral health and mental health services, including, critically for the moment that we are in our country, access to opioid treatment.

What this bill does is strip those essential benefits, including access to addiction services and mental health care, from that essential benefits package and says to the States: Good luck, you can pay for them if you want to, providing nowhere near the sufficient funding to cover all of the demands that our Republican colleague says the funding will be there for.

Now, to make matters even more convoluted in this, it was clear, during the debate in our committee 2 weeks ago for 28 straight hours, that some of our colleagues actually thought these protections were maintained when we pointed out that, in fact, they were stripped. There was then a different version of this bill that was brought forth for consideration called the manager's amendment. That manager's amendment happened to reinstate those benefits, which was great, and I applaud my Republican colleagues for doing so, aside from the fact that they then realized that they included those benefits and they offered an amendment to strip them back out, just in the past 36 hours, recognizing that there was a bill that they thought offered these benefits--the package of essential health benefits--for 11 million people to begin with, they found out that it didn't, in fact, offer it; they fixed it and put them back in a bill, realized they did it inadvertently and took it out again and are now laying that bill supposedly before our consideration tomorrow.

If health care is, in fact, that commitment we make to each other in our time of need, how does this bill answer that question? The average cost of a birth in this country is roughly $10,000. Medicaid itself pays for half of the births in our Nation. Maternal care and newborn care are covered under the essential health benefits, but not anymore for the Medicaid expansion population. For that population, having a child could very literally bring you to bankruptcy. That is the bill that this Republican Congress is putting forward for your consideration tomorrow.

That is one of the many reasons why I urge my colleagues to vote ``no.''

Mr. Speaker, I rise to share the story of a family that I have come to know. They came from a humble place, scraping by. Amidst instability in their native land, they could barely keep food on their table. For years, their government ignored their struggle and suffering. Like so many others, they dreamed of a better life in America.

Finally, they managed to cobble together enough money to make the dangerous journey to our shores. Yet, once here, they discovered that life wasn't so easy. They were resented for their accents, their faith, and their foreign ways. Doors were slammed in their faces when they sought work.

So they worked harder. They leaned on each other and those who came before. They forged a community and they organized. They built churches, businesses, and schools. Slowly but surely, they began to enjoy some measure of success and stability.

Mr. Speaker, I am sure that there are Garcias or Asgaris or Rodriguezes that share that same story, but the one I tell is not theirs.

This family's name is Kennedy. Struggling immigrants whose quest for a better life took them from Ireland's potato famine to Boston's immigrant barrios. It is the ageless story of a young man looking for a better future, of a family in search of a safe place to settle down, of the sacrifice that any parent would make for the benefit of their children. And it has been repeated millions of times in every corner of our world in the over 150 years since my ancestors fled their home to find a new one.

My father has a memory of my great-grandmother, Rose, that he shared with me once. He was playing outside with friends one day when she called him in. As he fidgeted around and impatiently tried to sit still, she pulled out a big scrapbook and flipped to a stack of carefully folded newspapers in the back. One after another, she opened them up to the help wanted section. There, she pointed to ad after ad marked in big block letters: No Irish need apply.

My great-grandmother's message was clear: Don't forget where you came from, don't forget the blood and the sweat and the tears that generations before you have shed so that you would never feel the sting of prejudice.

For my family and so many others, this became a deeply personal fight. In July of 1964, a young Attorney General named Robert Kennedy sat in front of the House Judiciary Committee. There, my grandfather urged Congress to act on immigration reform. Our system, he said, ``is a source of embarrassment to us around the world, it is a source of anguish to many of our own citizens, it is a source of loss to the economic and creative strength of our nation as a whole, it is inconsistent with our principles and out of step with our history.''

The opposition that he and other advocates have faced half a century ago sounds eerily familiar to so many of us today: Immigrants will flood our cities and towns. They will take American jobs. They will poison American culture. They aren't from here. They aren't like us. They are somebody else's babies.

Fifty years later, the opposition still hasn't updated their talking points. Fifty years later, our broken immigration system is still a source of embarrassment, but worse, of anguish and of loss. Fifty years later, we face a threat unlike almost any we have seen in recent history: a President who has built an entire campaign--and now an administration--on the scapegoating of immigrant families.

We have watched President Trump threaten our most fundamental American values with border walls and bad

hombres. We have heard his racial epithets. We have seen cold-hearted executive orders. We have stood in horror as his administration sweeps the country with raids that appear unprecedented in their utter disregard for family, community, and common decency.

That is why I stand here today, on the eve of St. Patrick's Day, the proud son of Irish immigrants and the humble beneficiary of our country's golden doors, to deliver a message to immigrant families: President Trump does not speak for all of us, and his immigration policies are opposed by leaders in Washington who do not take your patriotism for granted. We are grateful for your contribution to our communities, our culture, and our economy. We understand your willingness to walk to the ends of the Earth, to navigate oceans and mountains and deserts and war zones because every parent would do the same. We know what you have risked to give them a better future and what you have sacrificed to be a part of our United States. We stand by your side in the fight ahead.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for his work on this.

Mr. Speaker, after weeks of empty promises that he had a secret plan to insure every American at lower costs with higher quality care, President Trump is now standing behind a House GOP repeal plan that was introduced last night that fails every single one of those promises. Based on estimates that we have seen so far, millions of Americans stand to lose coverage, out-of-pocket costs will skyrocket, and the quality of care will plummet.

But today, hours after that bill was introduced, Mr. Speaker, our President referenced a to-be-announced second and third phase of his healthcare rollout that Secretary Price referred to as ``a work in progress,'' once again injecting our healthcare system with crippling uncertainty that is hurting our patients, hospitals, behavioral health providers, and local economies.

If you are so proud of this bill, why has it been locked in dark rooms? Why not have an open debate? What are we so afraid of to have a debate on this floor?

That is why I urge my colleagues, Democrats and Republicans alike, to support my resolution of inquiry tomorrow, to try to make sure that the details that have been discussed by this White House and by the Republicans behind closed doors are open for America to understand before we cram a healthcare overhaul down our throats.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today with a heavy heart to honor the memory of Bancroft ``Nick'' Littlefield, a dear friend and dedicated public servant who passed away last week.

Few in our country could match Nick's career. From stages on Broadway to classrooms at Harvard Law School to courtrooms in New York City and eventually to the halls of this Capitol as an aide to my uncle Senator Ted Kennedy--Nick did it all.

Always guided by the simple principle that our laws should help and protect our citizens, his fingerprints can be found on every page of landmark legislation such as the Children's Health Insurance Program, Americans with Disabilities Act, Family Medical Leave Act and the 1996 minimum wage increase.

As Senator Kennedy's Staff Director for the Senate Health, Education and Labor Committee from 1989 until 1998, he worked tirelessly behind the scenes to enact bipartisan reforms to our health insurance market and mental health system that would ultimately lay the foundation for the Affordable Care Act.

Each day he arrived at his Senate office, he brought a contagious enthusiasm for his work and extraordinary empathy for the people he served.

For all of his peers, regardless of political party, and for me as well, he will always be an inspiration because of his faith in what our government can accomplish when we work together.

Even while battling the multiple system atrophy that would leave him unable to walk, talk, write and sing, he considered himself ``not entirely unlucky'' to have the disease because it allowed him to ``truly sympathize'' with others who had disabilities.

Mr. Speaker, because of Nick's devotion to our country, those effected by once incurable illness have been healed, families struggling to care for a loved one are able to keep their job, millions of children have received the health care they need, and millions more who work for a living have been able to ensure that they do not live in poverty.

His intelligence, compassion, and dedication were matched only by his devotion to his family. In this difficult time, my thoughts and prayers are with Nick's wife, Jenny Lyman, as well as his stepchildren Frank, Tom and Kate. Our nation has lost a good man, but we are all better for the life he lived.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today with a heavy heart to honor the memory of Dr. John ``Jack'' Manning who passed away last week at the age of 96.

A life-long resident of Massachusetts, Jack attended Coyle High School in Taunton before enrolling at Boston College and earning his Medical Degree from Tufts University. Immediately after his graduation, he enlisted in the United States Navy and served aboard six warships from 1946 through 1950 as the only doctor.

When he returned home, he started a family with his beloved wife, Lily, and opened a pediatric office in Fall River. While continuing to operate his own private practice, Jack volunteered to become the Medical Director at a school for children with development disabilities. Through nearly 50 years at the school, he never accepted a penny for his services. Caring for those children became the cause of his life and he continued to fundraise for the school through the end of last year.

More than his professional and community service work, it was his love for his wife and his family that always guided him. Shortly after opening his pediatric office, Lily contracted paralytic polio. At the age of 33, she would never walk again, and Jack would never leave her side. After two years in hospitals throughout Massachusetts, Lily returned to a renovated home that accommodated her every medical need. Together they raised their sons, Jack and Mike.

A little over a decade ago, when Lily returned to the hospital for the last time suffering from pneumonia, Jack was asked how he took care of his wife and their boys for so long.

He replied that, ``Ours is not a sad story. I love her just as much today as I ever did, and I know she would have done the exact same thing for me.''

If only we could all be so lucky.

On behalf of all the children who Dr. Manning treated and all of the people he inspired, I extend my thoughts and prayers to his family in this difficult time.

Mr. Speaker, I rise this evening with a heavy heart to honor the memory of Nick Littlefield, a dear friend and dedicated public servant who passed away last week.

Few in our country could match Nick's career. From the stages of Broadway to classrooms at Harvard Law School, to courtrooms in New York City, and eventually to the Halls of this Capitol as an aide to my late uncle, Senator Ted Kennedy, Nick did it all.

Always guided by the simple principle that our laws should help protect our citizens, his fingerprints can be found on landmark legislation such as the Children's Health Insurance Program, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Family Medical Leave Act, and the 1996 minimum wage increase.

Every day that he arrived at his Senate office, he brought a contagious enthusiasm for his work and extraordinary empathy for the people he served. Even while battling the multiple system atrophy that ultimately cost him his life, he considered himself ``not entirely unlucky'' to have this disease because it allowed him to ``truly sympathize'' with those who had disabilities.

Nothing was ever more important to him than his family. In this difficult time, my thoughts and prayers are with Nick's incredible wife, Jenny, as well as his stepchildren Frank, Tom, and Kate.

Mr. Speaker, on Friday, I visited a community health center in Worcester, Massachusetts. There, at a place dedicated to healing those in their community, I met one of their patients. It was a 42-year-old Muslim refugee from Baghdad who arrived in the United States this past November. He, his wife, and his children spent 3 years in a Turkish refugee camp after fleeing their home country.

His family had been targeted in Iraq. He had been hospitalized four times with bombing injuries. He and his wife had both been shot. He watched his own brother burn to death in front of his eyes, and countless members of his family are still missing.

He was a musician back home, but he struggled to keep up his craft as he has fled. A doctor in that health center managed to track down a used trumpet and presented it to that man as a gift. Now, every time he visits that health center, he brings the trumpet and plays it for the staff.

My visit was no exception. He stood in front of our group and proudly played our national anthem with tears in his eyes because this country had given him a home. This country is helping him mend his wounds, has protected his family, and has given him a chance to fight another day.

It is a badge of honor that he shares with every single person living in our great Nation, regardless of color or creed, that we are all bound together by the immense opportunity of those golden doors, opened at one point for our own families sometime down the road.

Hours after our visit, our President--his President--told him that his relatives, his neighbors, and millions of others who have suffered just as he has were no longer welcome here.

To Samira Asgari, a 30-year-old doctor traveling to Boston to study cures for tuberculosis, he closed the doors.

To the Iraqi general who commands an American-trained counterterrorist force traveling here to visit his relocated family, our President closed our doors.

To all of the 21.3 million refugees worldwide, the leader of our free world told them that their pain and their suffering was not his problem, and he closed our doors.

And to the global community, he made clear that his government will give in to terror and will make decisions based on fear rather than strength.

Mr. President, I hope you hear us loud and clear when we say that these actions are an insult to the country we all love. They are an insult to our Constitution and an embarrassment to the blood, the sweat, and the tears that generations of Americans have shed in defense of Lady Liberty.

So, Mr. President, we will fight, we will march, we will protest, we will raise our voices, and one day we will win.

Madam Speaker, a few days ago, I stood immersed in a sea of women, of men, and of children of all colors, creeds, and backgrounds; citizens who fiercely believe that the diversity of their opinions anchor, that they do not undermine, the values that we share, and that their personal activism and unique advocacy could be traced back to one collective, guiding principle--equality.

As hundreds of thousands of people swarmed this Capital, Boston Common, town greens from Wilton, New Hampshire, to Newport, Oregon, they sent a clear message to their government that when you treat any of us as less, you threaten all of us.

And that is what this bill does. It tells women across this country that their health can be compromised; that constitutionally guaranteed means something different to them than it does to men.

If this was a simple attempt to limit a woman's legal right to abortion or reproductive health care, that would be bad enough. But it is more than that.

Combined with yesterday's reinstatement of the global gag rule, this bill crystallizes the fact that our new GOP-led government sees women's health care as expendable, both within and far beyond our borders.

Make no mistake, if my colleagues continue down this path, I know that there will be a few million men, women, and children willing to keep marching.

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank you for allowing me to discuss the Fair RATES Act, H.R. 587, and for bringing it to the floor today for a vote. I also want to thank the subcommittee chairman, Mr. Upton, his staff, and, of course, during his tenure as chairman of the full committee, his staff, along with the staff of Mr. Pallone and the chairman and ranking member of the subcommittees.

We have worked on this legislation for now several years. It did pass unanimously, as Chairman Upton indicated, on a bipartisan passage last year. I am grateful for his acknowledgment of that effort between our teams and that it is on the floor so early in this Congress.

Because many of my colleagues have heard me speak about this at length and patiently listened as I dove too far into the weeds about forward capacity auctions, I am hoping to keep this part short and am happy to answer any questions that anyone may have. As the chairman alluded to, New England holds an energy capacity auction to ensure that we have sufficient energy supply to meet consumer demand.

Mr. Speaker, 3 years ago, during an auction where there was a shortfall, those capacity payments tripled, skyrocketing from about $1 billion to $3 billion. That rate increase hasn't even reached our constituents yet, but this June, a significant portion of their bills will triple due to that auction.

When the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission reviewed that rate increase, they were down to four Commissioners, and they deadlocked 2- 2. One Democratic Commissioner and one Republican Commissioner raised concerns about whether those rates were just and reasonable for consumers. Because of the deadlock, those rates took effect by operation of law without any action from FERC. With no official decision from the agency, there was no

decision to appeal, leaving my constituents completely voiceless.

Mr. Speaker, in 2 weeks, our region will hold that same annual auction, once again determining rates that will be passed along to families and businesses in my district 3 years down the road. Once again, FERC is understaffed, without a full complement of Commissioners to consider the new rate filings.

Although the situation may sound complex and unique to New England, there is not a corner of this country that is immune from the unpredictability of American energy markets and the resulting burden our consumers and businesses are forced to bear as a result. That is why I urge my colleagues to pass this bill and enact a simple fix to a very complex problem.

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his comment.

Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as she may consume to the gentlewoman from Colorado (Ms. DeGette).

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

I will stand on the remarks I have already made, and I urge quick passage of the legislation.

I, again, want to extend my gratitude and thanks to Chairman Upton and his team for all of their work, both last Congress and this one.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, tomorrow this body is set to vote on a budget resolution that would dramatically cut Federal funding for Planned Parenthood. But today there is still time to reconsider that proposal and listen to the thousands, if not millions, of men, women, and children who are urging us not to because they understand the impact in our communities better than almost any of us here today.

Now, this isn't just about blocking a woman's constitutional right to her own healthcare options, although that would be bad enough. This is about gutting Medicaid reimbursements for preventive care and family planning, revoking every single dollar for 360,000 lifesaving breast exams and 4 million tests for sexually transmitted diseases. This is Congress choosing political gamesmanship at the expense of Americans' health, particularly those who cannot afford care otherwise. This is a tactical strike on low-income women and families.

In my home State of Massachusetts, it would immediately deny access to care to nearly 10,000 patients covered by MassHealth. For these men, women, and children, it is not as simple as walking to the nearest community health center, because over 50 percent of Planned Parenthood centers across our country are found in medically underserved communities.

For the elderly woman in need of cancer screening, there would be nowhere else to turn. For the young expectant mother in need of prenatal care, there would no longer be a community doctor that she can trust. For the dad whose son is in need of strep throat treatment, the only option left may be an unaffordable trip to the emergency room.

Mr. Speaker, if this is intended to be a warning shot on a constitutionally guaranteed right to have an abortion, my Republican colleagues are missing their target and, instead, they are aimed right at poor Americans.

I urge every Member of this House to talk to their constituents who have received care at Planned Parenthood centers before voting on this bill. I ask them to listen and understand the life-altering impact that it will have on the families who can least afford it.

Mr. Speaker, our country's economic forecast continues to improve, which is a good thing, but we do risk leaving far too many people behind as we come out of a recession. That is an issue for us all.

STEM education--science, technology, engineering, and mathematics--is a critical vehicle in making sure that all Americans have access to the economic gains that will power our country for the next generation. Over the next 10 years, STEM jobs will grow at normally double the rate of non-STEM jobs, and at all levels of education, STEM careers earn about 11 percent higher wages compared to their counterparts in other jobs.

Mr. Speaker, this is an enormous opportunity, but, to date, our efforts around STEM education have left huge segments of our population behind. Combined, Hispanics and African Americans only occupy about 13 percent of all STEM jobs. While women make up nearly half of the workforce overall, only 26 percent of STEM jobs are held by women. In 2013, there were 11 States in which not a single African American student took a computer science advanced placement test, and there were eight States in which no Hispanic students did and three States in which no women did.

Mr. Speaker, this is a challenge for us all. With this in mind, I rise, along with Representative Tonko and Senator Gillibrand, to introduce the STEM Gateways Act, which will try to make sure that access to the jobs of tomorrow is spread to all Americans.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in proud support of the Affordable Care Act and the millions of Americans that have received coverage under this law.

I rise today in support of the idea that in this country, the most powerful in the world, every citizen deserves access to quality affordable health care, and I rise today on behalf of the millions of children who get health insurance through the Children's Health Insurance Program which is also at risk today.

Mr. Speaker, one in five children today are on food stamps, 16 million kids under the age of 18. For the first time in 50 years, the majority of U.S. public school students live in poverty. CHIP was designed in the 1990s to try to address these kids and make sure that they had access to health care. Since then, the uninsured rate for children has dropped from 14 percent to 7 percent.

CHIP funding expires later this year and is included in this bill. More than 8 million children will lose access to health insurance. That is 150,000 children in Massachusetts alone.

Mr. Speaker, I ask my colleagues to hear those 8 million voices and vote ``no'' on this bill.

Mr. Speaker, I rise this evening in opposition to the House Republican plan to tear apart millions of families through extreme amendments to the Department of Homeland Security appropriations bill.

In the face of inaction by this House last year, our President was forced to use his constitutional authority to bring millions of our neighbors out of the shadows to fix a broken immigration system.

Through scrapping the Secure Communities Program and ensuring that parents of American citizens could no longer live in fear of deportation, the President's executive order has moved our country forward. However, it is no substitute for the bipartisan congressional action that the majority of the American people feel that we need and that passed the Senate 2 years ago.

By undermining the President's executive actions through amendments to DHS appropriations, my colleagues are not only jeopardizing critical funding for our Nation's security but also ignoring the pain and suffering they will cause to millions across our country.