Steve Israel

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize February as National Marfan Awareness Month with the hope that increased awareness of Marfan syndrome and related heritable connective tissue disorders will save lives.

Raising awareness of Marfan syndrome, a rare genetic condition affecting 1 in 5,000 Americans, is imperative to finding and funding effective treatment. This debilitating condition affects individuals both externally and internally.

Connective tissue, as a result of the overproduction of a protein called transforming growth factor beta (TGFB), is affected and therefore symptoms manifest throughout the entire body, causing disproportionately long limbs, a protruding or indented chest bone, curved spine, and loose joints.

Understanding the signs and features of Marfan syndrome are important and can save lives. This condition can affect all aspects of a person's internal structures, most notably their cardiovascular system. Often times, the aorta, the larger artery that carries blood away from the heart, is weakened and prone to enlargement and potential rupture. Because of the excess TGFB, Marfan patients are also at risk of aortic aneurysm.

However, early diagnosis and treatment can help to prevent cardiac events. For this reason, I believe States should consider developing programs to include Marfan syndrome testing in their sports screening criteria for at-risk young athletes.

I am proud to represent the Marfan Foundation, the leading organization working to support the Marfan community, based in Port Washington, New York. Since the group's inception, the Foundation has worked tirelessly to improve the lives of those affected by this condition through advancing research, raising awareness, and providing support over the past two decades. Through their efforts, patient care has improved and lives have been saved.

I urge my colleagues to stand with me to recognize National Marfan Awareness Month and reflect on the progress that has been made as well as the work that remains in order to ensure that those suffering from rare conditions can expect to see improvements in their health and healthcare.

Mr. Speaker, I want to start by reading a quote from today's Politico:

A faction of House and Senate conservatives is pushing

Republican leaders to take the battle over the Homeland

Security Department to the brink, arguing the party would win

the public relations war with Democrats if a standoff over

immigration led to a shutdown of the agency.

A public relations war. This is about the war on terror. In 16 days, the people who protect us from that war will lose their jobs or have to work without pay. We are 16 days away from a shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security and instead of planning how to protect us from our enemies, DHS is preparing contingency budgets in case this Republican Congress decides to shut them down.

To protect themselves from their political base in a fight on immigration, Republicans are willing to disrupt the protection of the American people in our communities, at our airports, our ports, and our borders.

Mr. Speaker, the bad guys have to be watching this and saying: Are you serious?

We should be serious about our homeland security and our economic security.

Mr. Speaker, this month, in a very short period of time, the Department of Homeland Security is going to run out of money. Our enemies, they plot, they plan to do us harm, and this Republican majority in this Congress refuses to give the Department of Homeland Security the full funding they need to keep us safe. What we will do this week is the 56th repeal of the Affordable Care Act.

Mr. Speaker, some in this Chamber may be willing to cater to their base for political reasons, but catering to our enemies in order to cater to the base is unacceptable.

Making it easier for our enemies to attack and do us harm by refusing to fund the Department of Homeland Security so you can score points with your base over a difference you may have with the President on an executive order is not what the American people want, expect, or deserve.

The contrast could not be more clear, Mr. Speaker. There is one party in this House that is willing to undermine our homeland security and to undermine the middle class' economic security. There is another that wants to strengthen both.