[Congressional Record Volume 161, Number 108 (Monday, July 13, 2015)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1046]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




     PROVIDING FOR CONSIDERATION OF H.R. 6, 21ST CENTURY CURES ACT

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                               speech of

                     HON. LOUISE McINTOSH SLAUGHTER

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                         Thursday, July 9, 2015

  Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I am the Ranking Member of the Rules 
Committee. Rules, as you know, is the process committee.
  Whether you are a majority or a minority member, you have rights, but 
they have been trampled on and abused with increasing regularity under 
this majority, and we have two glaring examples of that just today.
  Mr. Speaker, this bill is important to all of us, and we all agree on 
the importance of putting more money into major research in the United 
States, we are falling behind other countries in finding the cures and 
the innovation for which we have been known for centuries. This is an 
important step that we are taking. This is a critically important bill, 
but process matters.
  Mr. Speaker, after the Energy and Commerce Committee had voted out 
this bill unanimously, major changes were made with no committee input 
at all. They include a reduction of the amount of money that the 
committee had said would be put into the National Institutes of Health 
by $1.250 billion, a very substantial sum.
  They added some policy riders that literally made no sense. Why in 
the world would you put an abortion rider on a bill for medical 
research? As far as I know, the NIH and most medical universities doing 
this research do not perform abortion procedures. It was simply a way, 
again, to mollify members and make them vote for this bill.
  Mr. Speaker, despite the importance of this bill, despite the fact 
that it came out of committee unanimously, despite the fact that so 
many people have worked on it, and despite the fact that good things 
were in it, the process was completely changed after it was over by 
rewriting major portions of it. That doesn't appear anywhere in the 
rules of the House.
  Now, let's also think about what happened here last night during the 
debate on the Interior bill, which was considered under an open rule. 
After the Ranking Member, Betty McCollum of Minnesota, had yielded back 
her time, a new amendment was offered at the request of Republican 
leadership in order to pick up enough votes to ensure final passage. 
This new amendment sought to undo two already adopted amendments that 
would restrict the display of the Confederate flags in National Park 
Service cemeteries. These amendments were initially noncontroversial--
as they should have remained. In fact, they were adopted by voice vote. 
However, following a revolt by Members of the Republican Conference, 
Republican leadership offered this new amendment without any warning in 
order to gain more votes. In the end, the Majority pulled the entire 
bill in order to avoid taking a vote on their effort to place 
Confederate flags in U.S. cemeteries.
  Mr. Speaker, and then this morning the Majority chose to send Leader 
Pelosi's resolution to committee in order to avoid taking a vote on it. 
Her resolution would have required the removal of state flags 
containing the Confederate battle flag from the House wing of the 
Capitol, unless the flag is flown by an individual Member. Mr. McGovern 
stated quite precisely that the resolution will die in committee--we 
will never see that one again. Unfortunately, that's what happens here, 
but Mr. Speaker, it is time it was stopped.
  I was born in a border State, in Kentucky. I lived there most of my 
life. I was educated there. I never saw a Confederate flag in all those 
years. These battle flags that they are putting up appeared in the 
South after the civil rights legislation. They were the products of 
Strom Thurmond and the Dixiecrats. That is when they started to bloom 
all over. It is a symbol of pure hate or fear. It needs to go.

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