[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 14]
[Senate]
[Pages 18927-18928]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                     WOMEN'S ACCESS TO HEALTH CARE

  Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, like many of my colleagues I am deeply 
disappointed that Republican leaders have dedicated this week to 
partisan, political attacks rather than working with us to deliver 
results to the families we represent. So I wish to take a few minutes 
today to talk about the work we could and should be doing and make 
clear again that Republican efforts to undermine families' health care 
are nothing but a dead end.
  I am pleased that over the last few months Democrats and Republicans 
have been able to work together on some very important issues. We 
passed another bipartisan budget deal. We have worked on a bill 
together to fix the No Child Left Behind law that is broken, and 
Republicans and Democrats are now working to pass a transportation bill 
that would do a lot to help fix our crumbling infrastructure. But there 
is certainly a lot more that we should be doing to boost wages, to 
expand opportunity, and to make sure our economy is growing from the 
middle out, not from the top down. I would hope that we would be 
working on a way to raise the minimum wage or ensure that working 
parents can earn paid sick days or make higher education more 
affordable and accessible for our students.
  With the holidays just around the corner, we should be focused on 
what struggling families need to make ends meet. Those are the kinds of 
issues I would like to be working on and many more, but instead 
Republican leaders are insisting on tilting at tea party windmills by 
trying to dismantle the Affordable Care Act for the umpteenth time.
  This bill is not going to be signed into law. As we all know, this is 
just a political gesture here. But I want to be very clear about what 
it would mean for millions of men, women, and children across the 
country if this were to be signed into law. The policies that are being 
put forward could cause millions of people to lose their health care 
coverage, make premiums skyrocket, increase costs for our hospitals and 
for our providers, cut off support for important public health programs 
by repealing the prevention fund, and take us back to the bad old days 
when insurance companies, not patients, had all of the power.
  Democrats believe strongly that while the Affordable Care Act was an 
historic step forward, the work did not end when the law passed--far 
from it.
  We are willing to work with anyone on either side of the aisle who 
has good ideas about how to build on the progress that has been made so 
far and continue making health care more affordable, expanding 
coverage, and improving quality of care for our families.
  So it is very disappointing that Republicans instead continue to 
insist that when it comes to health care, politics--not families--comes 
first. This is especially because--again to be very clear--this 
legislation has no chance of becoming law. The very same is true when 
it comes to this latest attempt to cut off women's access to health 
care.

[[Page 18928]]

  After years of trying to turn back the clock on women's 
constitutionally protected rights and to undermine Planned Parenthood, 
Republicans should have gotten their fill of political attacks on 
women's health. Clearly, they have not.
  In the wake of the tragedy in Colorado Springs last week, I have 
thought a lot about how important it is that we do more to insure 
communities are protected from that kind of violence and that we 
continue to stand with Planned Parenthood as it helps so many people--
women and men--get the care they need.
  So it is very frustrating that my Republican colleagues are doubling 
down this week on their efforts to defund Planned Parenthood and get in 
between women and their health care. If Republicans were to succeed in 
the bill they have before us in defunding Planned Parenthood--our 
Nation's largest women's health care provider--with the legislation we 
are debating today, they would undermine a critical source of health 
care that one in five women have relied on for cancer screenings, for 
HIV tests, and for so much more. They would make it harder for women to 
exercise their constitutionally protected right to make their own 
choices about their own bodies and their own doctors.
  By dismantling critical health care reforms, this proposal would 
cause millions of women to lose their health care coverage and access 
to everything from birth control to prenatal care. That is simply not 
going to happen--not on my watch, not on Democrats' watch, and not on 
President Obama's watch. Republicans may want to go back to the days 
when being a woman was a preexisting condition. They may see this 
entire bizarre effort as nothing more than a great opportunity to 
pander to their extreme tea party base by attacking health care and 
Planned Parenthood. But for millions of women and families, the 
policies we are debating today are no political exercise; instead, if 
enacted, they would represent a deeply harmful step backward--a step 
away from building a health care system that is affordable, accessible, 
and high quality, one that contributes to economic security and 
opportunity.
  Women and families have seen these extreme Republican attempts many 
times before, and, frankly, I think they have had enough. They don't 
want Congress fighting over whether to roll back a law that has helped 
millions of people get health care coverage and bolstered our Nation's 
health care system, a law that has been upheld time and time again by 
the Supreme Court, and they believe firmly that politicians in Congress 
should have better things to do than interfere with women's 
constitutionally protected health care choices. I am sure they would 
rather see us working to actually improve health care and the many 
other challenges our country faces.
  Democrats agree with that. We want to move health care forward, not 
backward, for women and families, and we want to do the other important 
work across the aisle to strengthen our economy and grow our middle 
class. So today, as my Republican colleagues double down on their 
partisan political pandering, we on this side are going to continue to 
stand up for family health care and stand up for women and their rights 
every step of the way. I hope my Republican colleagues will finally 
drop the politics and join us.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from West Virginia.

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