[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 37 (Tuesday, February 25, 2020)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1125-S1126]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                           Women's Healthcare

  Madam President, on another matter also related to healthcare, today 
Leader McConnell and Senate Republicans have scheduled votes on two 
divisive, anti-choice, anti-women, and anti-family bills. The Senate 
has voted them down before; it will again.
  After weeks of complaining that the impeachment trial of President 
Trump was preventing the Senate from doing the people's business, this 
is what the Senate Republicans have proposed: fake, dishonest, and 
extreme legislation that has nothing to do with improving the lives of 
ordinary Americans. I say ``fake'' because these bills pretend we don't 
already have laws on the books that protect infants. Additional 
legislation is completely unnecessary, irrational, a show with no 
positive effect on the women of America who need healthcare. 
Healthcare, Mr.

[[Page S1126]]

President. Healthcare, Republican Senators. Healthcare. That is what 
women want, not these show bills that appeal to an extreme view. The 
American people know it. The American women know it.
  Additional legislation such as proposed today is at best unnecessary 
and irrational. But it is dishonest because these bills are not 
intended to fix real problems faced by real Americans; they are 
intended to provoke fear and misunderstanding about a very difficult 
issue so Republicans can score political points with their far-right 
base. Any Senator who thinks this is going to appeal to the mainstream 
of their constituents--women throughout their States--is missing the 
point.
  I say ``extreme'' because these bills would, in effect, criminalize 
women's reproductive care and intimidate healthcare providers--another 
example of the Senate Republicans' war on Roe v. Wade and a woman's 
constitutionally protected right to make her own private healthcare 
decisions and to not have politicians tell a woman what to do.
  Putting these already defeated bills up for a show vote is not a 
good-faith attempt to improve the lives of everyday Americans--
particularly everyday American women--as Republicans claim they want to 
desperately do. Every single Senate Republican knows these bills cannot 
and will not pass, but they are putting them on the floor anyway to 
pander to the hard right and to cover up the fact that they will not 
provide good healthcare for women, that they are voting day in and day 
out to take away the right to healthcare of women throughout America 
and letting the administration, led by President Trump, do just that.
  If Republicans were serious about getting back to the people's 
business, there is no shortage of bipartisan legislation we could 
consider. Nearly 400 bills have passed the House, hundreds of them on a 
bipartisan basis, and they have collected dust in this Chamber. They 
have gone into Leader McConnell's legislative trash can. On healthcare 
alone, we have legislation to protect Americans with preexisting 
conditions, legislation that would eliminate junk insurance plans, and 
legislation to reduce maternal and infant mortality rates, which my 
colleague from Illinois will talk about, I believe, shortly. All of 
these bills have languished in Leader McConnell's legislative junkyard.
  When Leader McConnell or any Republican says ``Oh, impeachment 
stopped us from doing things,'' look at what we are not doing today--
not only what we are doing, which is meaningless to women, but what we 
are not doing--protecting their healthcare, protecting Roe v. Wade, 
which two-thirds of American women want protected.
  Any of the proposals that are in McConnell's legislative graveyard 
would be better than this anti-choice, anti-women, and anti-family 
legislation, but, typical of Leader McConnell, Republicans have chosen 
once again to play politics on the Senate floor.
  Leader McConnell should stop wasting the few votes he does schedule 
with these shameless political stunts and instead bring legislation to 
the floor that would actually improve the healthcare of the American 
people and of American women in particular.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Loeffler). The Democratic whip is 
recognized.