[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 162 (2016), Part 6]
[House]
[Pages 7434-7445]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




    RELATING TO CONSIDERATION OF THE SENATE AMENDMENT TO H.R. 2577, 
  TRANSPORTATION, HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT, AND RELATED AGENCIES 
                        APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2016

  Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call 
up House Resolution 751 and ask for its immediate consideration.
  The Clerk read the resolution, as follows:

                              H. Res. 751

       Resolved, That upon adoption of this resolution--
        (a) the House hereby takes from the Speaker's table the 
     bill (H.R. 2577) making appropriations for the Departments of 
     Transportation, and Housing and Urban Development, and 
     related agencies for the fiscal year ending September 30, 
     2016, and for other purposes, with the Senate amendment 
     thereto, and concurs in the Senate amendment with an 
     amendment consisting of the text of Rules Committee Print 
     114-56; and
       (b) it shall be in order for the chair of the Committee on 
     Appropriations or his designee to move that the House insist 
     on its amendment to the Senate amendment to H.R. 2577 and 
     request a conference with the Senate thereon.

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Kelly of Mississippi). The gentleman 
from Oklahoma is recognized for 1 hour.
  Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the 
customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. 
McGovern), pending which I yield myself such time as I may consume. 
During consideration of this resolution, all time yielded is for the 
purpose of debate only.


                             General Leave

  Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may

[[Page 7435]]

have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentleman from Oklahoma?
  There was no objection.
  Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, yesterday the Rules Committee met and reported 
a rule to expedite consideration of legislation that would deal with 
the imminent threat of the Zika virus. The rule provides that the House 
concur in the Senate amendment with a further amendment consisting of 
the text of H.R. 4974, H.R. 5243, and H.R. 897, as passed by the House, 
and provides a motion from the chair of the Committee on Appropriations 
to request a conference with the Senate.
  Mr. Speaker, as I said last week, the debate between Republicans and 
Democrats is not over whether or not to address the Zika threat, but 
whether to pay for it or just to add it to the national credit card.
  This rule would provide for a conference between the House and the 
Senate on the Zika response legislation, as passed by the House. As 
opposed to the Senate approach, which adds an additional $1.2 billion 
to the national debt, the House approach acts responsibly by using 
existing funds designated for Ebola and other infectious diseases to 
pay for our response to the looming Zika threat.

                              {time}  0915

  Mr. Speaker, many of my friends on the other side have claimed that 
the House Republicans' response to the Zika threat has been wholly 
insufficient. Frankly, I disagree with that view. In our view, our 
response is, really, the second of three tranches of funds directed at 
Zika.
  First, Chairman Rogers, Chairman Granger, and I directed the 
administration to use existing funds for Ebola and other infectious 
diseases to deal with the immediate threat. Thus far, the 
administration has used nearly $600 million to support efforts to 
combat Zika.
  The second tranche of money that is included in this legislation 
would provide an additional $622 million for Zika.
  Finally, I want to assure my colleagues that we will commit 
additional resources in the FY 2017 appropriations process to ensure 
that the administration request is fully fulfilled, providing nearly 
$1.9 billion, which is the amount requested by the administration to 
combat Zika.
  In conclusion, Mr. Speaker, I think it is important to reiterate that 
I do not disagree with my friends about the need to confront the Zika 
virus quickly. In fact, I have been to Brazil. I have been to 
Argentina.
  I have visited the infected areas and have spent a lot of hours in 
talking to our people on the ground there who are both investigating 
the disease and working with local governments to try and take care of 
some of the outbreak down there.
  We have visited extensively with our friends up here at the National 
Institutes of Health and at the Centers for Disease Control and 
Prevention. The only difference I have with my friends is whether or 
not we pay for the activity.
  I believe, Mr. Speaker, that, if we already have the resources to 
confront the crisis, which we do, we should do so within our existing 
capabilities as opposed to adding to the deficit.
  I look forward to working with my colleagues in conference, through 
regular order, to ensure a bipartisan agreement can be reached. I urge 
my colleagues to support the rule and the underlying legislation.
  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume, 
and I thank the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Cole), my good friend, for 
yielding me the customary 30 minutes.
  Mr. Speaker, let me start by saying how disappointed I am by the 
inadequate and long overdue response by this Republican majority to the 
Zika crisis.
  With nearly 1,400 Americans, including more than 275 pregnant women 
who are currently infected with the virus and well over a million cases 
expected before the end of the year, it is absolutely shameful that 
this House has failed to act on legislation to adequately fund a 
response to this potentially devastating crisis.
  Mr. Speaker, Zika is not coming to the United States. It is here. As 
summer arrives, along with mosquito season, the mosquito that carries 
the Zika virus will be active and knocking on the doors of our southern 
States and territories.
  This is an emergency, and it should be treated as such. But my 
friends on the other side of the aisle have spent months in delaying 
action and in making excuse after excuse after excuse about why we 
don't need to provide the full funding that our Nation's public health 
experts say we need.
  I appreciate the fact that my friends on the other side of the aisle 
consider themselves public health experts, but there are people who are 
trained to be public health experts who tell us that what we are doing 
here today is underfunding an adequate response to this crisis.
  I suppose I shouldn't be surprised by this, as my friends in the 
majority have made it a habit of ignoring the advice of scientists and 
of experts in favor of appeasing a small group in their Conference on 
the extreme right.
  In February, President Obama requested $1.9 billion to address the 
public health threat that is posed by the Zika virus. Instead of taking 
the swift action that was needed to confront this crisis, the House 
delayed and delayed and delayed as the Zika crisis continued to spread.
  We should have sent a bill to President Obama's desk months ago, but, 
instead, this leadership allowed months to go by without there being 
any action on this issue until last week, when they brought to the 
floor a completely inadequate $622 million package that provides only 
one-third of the funds that have been requested by the administration.
  House Democrats, under the leadership of Leader Pelosi and 
Appropriations Committee Ranking Member Lowey, have tried to bring to 
the floor meaningful emergency funding to address Zika, only to be 
blocked by House Republicans five times.
  While the administration has taken significant steps to help keep 
Americans safe from the Zika virus, significant additional 
appropriations are needed. In a letter to Speaker Ryan, OMB Director 
Shaun Donovan and National Security Advisor Susan Rice said, without 
emergency supplemental funding, mosquito control and surveillance may 
need to be suspended.
  State and local governments that manage mosquito control may not be 
able to hire personnel for mosquito mitigation efforts, and vaccine 
developments, which require multiyear funding commitments, may be 
jeopardized.
  To make matters worse, Mr. Speaker, House Republicans sent to the 
floor last week and again this week a bill to undermine the Clean Water 
Act and protections for our waterways under the guise of helping to 
contain the Zika virus.
  But the truth of the matter is that the legislation is nothing more 
than a carve-out for pesticide special interests and it would have 
absolutely no effect on spraying pesticides to combat the spread of the 
Zika virus.
  It is a bill my friends have brought to the floor in the past, but 
they just couldn't help themselves in using this crisis as an excuse to 
further undermine environmental protections.
  Instead of working with Democrats to address this public health 
emergency in a serious bipartisan way that puts the health and safety 
of the American people first, the Republican leadership has once again 
brought to the floor partisan legislation that will not adequately meet 
the needs of the CDC, of the NIH, of the USAID, and of other 
governmental agencies that are on the front lines in responding to this 
crisis.
  Let me close, Mr. Speaker, by saying that I have great respect for 
the gentleman from Oklahoma. When he says that he intends to support 
every effort to make sure that adequate funding is available, if I 
thought this whole decision were up to him alone, I don't

[[Page 7436]]

think I would be as nervous as I am at this particular point, but his 
party that is in control has shut this government down.
  We have seen them lurch from one crisis to another crisis and 
underfund one priority after another priority. Quite frankly, I don't 
trust the people who are running this House to do the right thing, to 
be able to get a majority of their majority to go along with providing 
the appropriate funding.
  Yes, we all want to be fiscally responsible, but let me tell you 
this: if all you are worried about is the bottom line--and that is the 
cost--by not adequately funding what is needed to combat this crisis, 
the costs that will result if this crisis gets out of control will be 
prohibitive. You ain't seen nothing yet.
  So we can nickel-and-dime this all we want, but we do so at our own 
peril. We ought to be concerned primarily with the safety and well-
being of the citizens of this country.
  But if that is not enough to prompt my friends on the other side of 
the aisle to support the President's request, I would suggest that the 
cost of ignoring this problem of not adequately funding an appropriate 
response will be a cost like you have never seen before.
  I urge my colleagues to defeat this rule and to bring up strong 
bipartisan legislation that will fully fund the administration's 
request. This is a public health emergency, and we must act now.
  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  I begin by pointing out to my good friend that, actually, we are 
doing, in a sense, what he is urging us to do right now. We are moving 
expeditiously to go to conference with our friends in the Senate, who 
have passed one version of the Zika response.
  We will have our version. We will sit down and work out a compromise, 
and I suspect we will be able to move pretty smartly through this. What 
we are doing here today is exactly what I know my friend wants us to 
do, and that is to move and respond.
  I also point out--and it gets lost in the rhetoric sometimes around 
this issue--that there is not one thing the Federal Government has 
proposed to do about Zika that it has been unable to do because of a 
lack of money. The Federal Government has had every cent that it has 
asked for.
  Frankly, it was Hal Rogers, the chairman of the Appropriations 
Committee, who solicited Ms. Granger, the chairman of the Subcommittee 
on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Agencies, and I, as the chair 
of the Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and 
Related Agencies, to write the administration and tell them to start 
spending money immediately from the things they had. Then that money 
would be backfilled as needed during the normal appropriations process.
  That is exactly what has been done. No measure has failed to be 
implemented because of a lack of money. There has been no delay in 
money for the Zika response, and there are substantial efforts to move 
ahead in this regard.
  My friend made the point that we sometimes seem to ignore the advice 
of scientists. That is just simply not true. For Ebola last year, the 
administration got the response it wanted out of this Congress 
immediately. Frankly, it has gotten an immediate response out of Zika.
  I point out to my friend--he may not be aware of this because he is 
not on the Appropriations Committee--that last year the President of 
the United States asked for $1 billion for additional research at the 
National Institutes of Health. We gave him $2 billion.
  He asked for a certain amount of money--forgive me for not 
remembering the exact figure--for the Centers for Disease Control and 
Prevention. We gave him more money than he asked for. This year we will 
do that again. He has made requests for additional money.
  We will go beyond what he has requested at both the National 
Institutes of Health and at the Centers for Disease Control and 
Prevention. So in suggesting we are not funding these efforts robustly, 
the truth is, if you look at the numbers, we are actually spending more 
money than the President asked for because we think these are national 
priorities.
  While we listen to scientists, we also listen to economists. They 
tell us that running up a national debt willy-nilly is not a very good 
thing to do. In this case, we have the money and we have the time to 
deal with this in a thoughtful and prudent way and to advance the 
efforts without running up the national debt. It is the appropriate way 
to proceed.
  I would just ask my friend to think back. When we hear this figure, 
this is only a third of the response. Somehow my friends on the other 
side have forgotten that the first third is already done. That was the 
first $600 million that is being deployed as we speak. This is the next 
third.
  Frankly, it reaches not only the balance for the remainder of this 
fiscal year, but it reaches into next year. This is more money, once we 
pass this, than the administration has proposed to deploy in this 
fiscal or even this calendar year.
  Then, in the normal appropriations process, which is underway right 
now--the bill will probably be presented sometime in the middle of June 
to the Appropriations Committee--you will see additional money in both 
the State and Foreign Operations bill and in the Labor-H bill that is 
targeted toward Zika. The one difference is it will all have been paid 
for.
  I think that is what shocks my friends the most. They would much 
prefer to save that money so as to spend it someplace else. We think it 
is a crisis. We have the money. We ought to spend the money right now 
and take care of Zika.
  We are going to continue to work with our friends, and I think we 
will arrive at a good place. My hope is that that measure that we enact 
at the end is fully paid for. That is what we are trying to achieve 
here.
  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  I think what we are concerned about on this side of the aisle--and I 
know some thoughtful Republicans are also concerned about this--is the 
fact that, without certainty, a lot of the research projects and a lot 
of initiatives that need to be done at the Federal and State levels 
will not happen because no one knows whether the money is going to 
follow for what is needed.
  I think there is a lack of certainty because we are in a House of 
Representatives that has shut the government down before. If people 
don't get their way, people have a tantrum and they shut the government 
down. That is the history of this House of Representatives.
  I quote here from Dr. Anthony Fauci, the Director of the National 
Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes 
of Health, whom I actually have a great deal of trust in.
  He says:

       If we do not get the money that the President has asked 
     for--the $1.9 billion--that is going to have a very serious, 
     negative impact on our ability to get the job done.

  That is Dr. Fauci. That is not I. That is a highly respected 
scientist, whom I think we all have a great deal of respect for in this 
House. We ought to listen to him more than to the Tea Party wing of the 
Republican Party.
  Mr. Speaker, I ask my friends to defeat the previous question. If we 
do, I will offer an amendment to the rule that modifies the House 
amendment by replacing the Zika virus provisions with the text of H.R. 
5044, which is the Democratic alternative that fully funds the 
administration's request.
  The Republican majority's current plan is to pass creatively named 
bills that have nothing to do with Zika and to offer short-term 
spending commitments that will, unfortunately, fail to properly 
incentivize the private sector to help develop a vaccine.

                              {time}  0930

  Our alternative would give our scientists and our doctors the 
resources

[[Page 7437]]

they need to mount a longer-term, robust response to the growing Zika 
crisis.
  Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert the text of the 
amendment in the Record, along with extraneous material, immediately 
prior to the vote on the previous question.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentleman from Massachusetts?
  There was no objection.
  Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, to discuss our proposal, I yield 4 minutes 
to the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Lowey), the distinguished 
ranking member of the Committee on Appropriations.
  Mrs. LOWEY. Mr. Speaker, before I make my statement, I just want to 
respond to our distinguished chair of the Subcommittee on Labor, Health 
and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies.
  Has the chairman of the Committee on Appropriations introduced 
subcommittee allocations for either the Subcommittee on Labor, Health 
and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies or the Subcommittee 
on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs?
  The answer is no.
  Has the chairman set markup dates for either the Subcommittee on 
Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies or 
the Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs 
bill?
  The answer is no.
  So there is no chance that Congress will send either appropriations 
bill to the President by September 30. This really is a charade. CDC 
Director Tom Frieden says 3 months is an eternity for control of an 
outbreak. There is a narrow window of opportunity here, and it is 
closing.
  So, Mr. Speaker, I rise to urge my colleagues to defeat the previous 
question so we can support a robust and aggressive response to an 
imminent public health emergency.
  Researchers at Harvard and CDC reported that pregnant women who 
contract the Zika virus in their first trimester face as high as a 13 
percent chance that their baby will have microcephaly. Nearly 300 
pregnant women in the United States and its territories are terrified 
that their child will have a devastating birth defect, and that number 
increases every day. Every day we learn more about the devastating 
virus, and each piece of news is more alarming than the last.
  That is why President Obama acted responsibly and requested $1.9 
billion to research and develop vaccines and diagnostic tests, invest 
in mosquito vector control, and implement an aggressive public 
education and outreach campaign.
  Yet, the House Republican Zika bill would provide a mere $622 
million, which is less than one-third of the $1.9 billion that public 
health experts tell us is necessary to protect American communities. To 
make matters worse, the bill robs Peter to pay Paul, stealing funding 
still needed to protect against Ebola and increase public preparedness 
at home.
  The spread of the Zika virus is taking a severe toll on Brazil and 
other South and Central American countries. It has spread to Puerto 
Rico, and the outbreak is knocking at our door.
  Why are my friends in the majority acting more like bureaucrats and 
accountants than responsive representatives of hardworking Americans?
  Protecting American communities is the foremost responsibility of the 
Federal Government. Yet, the majority has failed to lead the way to a 
response worthy of this emergency.
  If the previous question is defeated, Mr. McGovern will amend the 
rule to offer my bill, H.R. 5044, as a substitute, providing the full 
$1.9 billion the administration requested, without offsets, to ensure 
an adequate response to Zika that doesn't rob our Ebola response.
  I urge me colleagues to vote ``no'' on the previous question.
  Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from 
Pennsylvania (Mr. Dent), the chairman of the Appropriations 
Subcommittee on Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related 
Agencies.
  Mr. DENT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding. He is 
obviously a very thoughtful member of the Committee on Rules and a fine 
member of our Committee on Appropriations.
  I believe we have something really important to discuss today, and 
that is that today really does mark a return to regular order for our 
appropriations bills and process. That statement is so significant that 
we need to pause and recognize it as a tremendous achievement. This has 
been the intense focus of Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers 
for more than 5 years. And the committee's esteemed ranking member, 
too, Mrs. Lowey, has been equally determined to have regular order 
restored. They have worked relentlessly to get us to this place, which 
is, in fact, a better place. So I commend Chairman Rogers and Mrs. 
Lowey and appreciate the support of the House leadership to make this 
happen. This is the best way to serve our citizens, our Federal 
agencies, our veterans, our military services, and the members and 
their families.
  It is also my honor to have the Military Construction, Veterans 
Affairs, and Related Agencies appropriations bill move forward as part 
of the conference committee. That is very significant to me as chairman 
of that subcommittee. Of course, we are also going to deal with the 
Zika threat as we must and as we should, and that will be part of these 
discussions. I am sure we are going to be able to come to an agreement 
with the Senate just on how we will proceed on that very important 
issue, and I think everybody here is committed to moving forward both 
on the MILCON piece of this as well as Zika.
  H.R. 4974--and that is the Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, 
and Related Agencies bill--demonstrates our firm commitment to fully 
supporting our Nation's veterans and servicemembers. Our investment of 
$81.6 billion for Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related 
Agencies, at $1.8 billion over last year's level, is unprecedented. The 
bill will address issues to help veterans in every part of the country, 
every congressional district, and our troops throughout the world.
  The bill provides comprehensive support for servicemembers, military 
families, and veterans with $7.9 billion. It supports our troops with 
facilities and services necessary to maintain readiness and morale at 
bases here in the States and, again, overseas. It provides for the 
Department of Defense schools and health clinics that take care of our 
military families.
  For the VA, this bill includes $73.5 billion in discretionary 
funding. The bill funds our veterans healthcare systems to ensure that 
our promise to care for those who sacrificed in defense of this great 
Nation continues as those men and women return home. We owe this 
support to our veterans and we are committed to sustained oversight so 
that programs deliver what they promise and taxpayers are well served 
by the investments that we make.
  So I certainly support this motion to go to conference. I certainly 
urge adoption of this motion so we can deal with taking care of our 
servicemembers, our veterans, and their families. We must do this. Of 
course, we must also deal with the Zika threat that is affecting so 
many of us. I commend everybody involved in that issue.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The time of the gentleman has expired.
  Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield the gentleman an additional 1 minute.
  Mr. DENT. Mr. Speaker, I wanted to commend Chairman Cole for his 
efforts on this issue. I serve with him on the Subcommittee on Labor, 
Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies. I know he 
has been in constant communication with our friends at the NIH and the 
CDC to make sure we get the resources necessary to them so they can 
help us deal with this very real threat.
  Again, I am very pleased that we have returned to regular order and 
that we are going to conference this bill on Military Construction, 
Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies, and on Zika. It is great for 
the Congress, great for the country, and we need to move forward.

[[Page 7438]]


  Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  I have great respect for the gentleman from Pennsylvania, and I agree 
with him that there are a lot of issues that he has championed here.
  He used the words ``regular order.'' We have no allocations, no 
budget resolution. We know that many of the appropriations bills will 
never see the light of day on the House floor. There will be this mad 
rush after the election to put together some big omnibus package that 
most people will never be able to read. If that is regular order, we 
have a very strong difference of opinion of what regular is all about.
  Mr. Speaker, I insert into the Record a letter that was sent to the 
House leadership signed by close to 70 health organizations--every 
major health organization in the country--calling for new funding 
rather than repurposing money from other high-priority programs to 
combat Zika, also supporting the President's request. It talks about 
how we have a brief window of opportunity to slow the spread of the 
Zika virus and avert a wave of preventable birth defects and urging 
Congress to act certainly in a much more aggressive way than what we 
are doing here today.

                                                    April 5, 2016.
     Hon. Paul Ryan,
     Speaker, House of Representatives, Washington, DC.
     Hon. Fred Upton,
     Chairman, Committee on Energy and Commerce, Washington, DC.
     Hon. Hal Rogers,
     Chairman, Committee on Appropriations, Washington, DC.
     Hon. Nancy Pelosi,
     Minority Leader, House of Representatives, Washington, DC.
     Hon. Frank Pallone,
     Ranking Member, Committee on Energy and Commerce, Washington, 
         DC.
     Hon. Nita Lowey,
     Ranking Member, Committee on Appropriations, Washington, DC.
       Dear Speaker Ryan and Minority Leader Pelosi, Chairman 
     Upton and Representative Upton, and Chairman Rogers and 
     Representative Lowey: The undersigned organizations committed 
     to the health and wellbeing of our nation's families and 
     communities urge you in the strongest terms to immediately 
     provide emergency supplemental funding to prepare for and 
     respond to the Zika virus here in the United States. We also 
     urge that Congress provide new funding rather than repurpose 
     money from other high priority programs at the Centers for 
     Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and other federal 
     agencies that ensure our health security and public health 
     preparedness.
       As you know, the Zika virus has been linked to 
     microcephaly, a serious birth defect of the brain, in babies 
     of mothers who contracted the virus while pregnant. Thousands 
     of devastating birth defects have been observed among infants 
     born in South and Central America in recent months. Zika has 
     already been diagnosed in travelers returning to the U.S. 
     from these areas. As the summer months approach and we enter 
     mosquito season, our nation can expect to be exposed to 
     mosquitos that can spread this virus. Over four million 
     babies are born in our nation each year, and many of their 
     mothers could be at risk for contracting Zika during 
     pregnancy.
       With emergency supplemental funding to respond to the Zika 
     virus, state and local public health professionals would have 
     access to increased virus readiness and response capacity 
     focused on areas with ongoing Zika transmission; enhanced 
     laboratory, epidemiology and surveillance capacity in at-risk 
     areas to reduce the opportunities for Zika transmission and 
     surge capacity through rapid response teams to limit 
     potential clusters of Zika virus in the United States. 
     Moreover, supplemental funding will assist the CDC and USAID 
     in efforts to contain the Zika virus in Zika-endemic 
     countries and ensure that there are resources for 
     surveillance, vector control and services for affected 
     pregnant women and children.
       If we take immediate action, we may be able to dramatically 
     slow the spread of Zika, giving scientists time to develop 
     and test a vaccine. Without action, however, we fear the 
     number of newborns born with debilitating birth defects will 
     only continue to rise. In addition to the human toll on 
     children and families, the CDC estimates that the average 
     lifetime cost of caring for each child born with microcephaly 
     will likely be millions of dollars per child. For hard-hit 
     communities, an epidemic of severe birth defects could 
     quickly overwhelm health care and social services systems, 
     and put extreme pressure on educational and other 
     institutions.
       The President has requested emergency funding to educate 
     Americans about protecting themselves, reduce the mosquito 
     population, and accelerate Zika vaccine research. Each of 
     these steps is vital to reducing the likelihood that pregnant 
     women will be exposed to the Zika virus.
       Our nation has a brief window of opportunity to slow the 
     spread of the Zika virus and avert a wave of preventable 
     birth defects. We urge you to act immediately to provide the 
     emergency resources necessary to protect pregnant women, 
     infants and children from this devastating infection.
           Sincerely,
       Academic Pediatric Association, American Academy of Family 
     Physicians, American Academy of Pediatrics, American 
     Association for Clinical Chemistry, American Association for 
     Pediatric Ophthalmology and Strabismus, American College of 
     Nurse-Midwives, American College of Preventive Medicine, 
     American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, 
     American Medical Association, American Nurses Association, 
     American Pediatric Society, American Public Health 
     Association, American Sexual Health Association, American 
     Society for Clinical Pathology, American Society for 
     Reproductive Medicine, Association for Professionals in 
     Infection Control and Epidemiology, Association of Maternal & 
     Child Health Programs, Association of Medical School 
     Pediatric Department Chairs, Association of Public Health 
     Laboratories, Association of Reproductive Health 
     Professionals, Association of Schools and Programs of Public 
     Health, Association of State and Territorial Health 
     Officials, Association of Women's Health, Obstetric and 
     Neonatal Nurses.
       Children's Environmental Health Network, Children's 
     Hospital Association, Commissioned Officers Association of 
     the U.S. Public Health Service, Inc., Cooley's Anemia 
     Foundation, Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists, 
     Easter Seals, Every Child By Two, First Candle, GBS/CIDP 
     Foundation International, Healthcare Ready, HIV Medicine 
     Association, Infectious Diseases Society of America, 
     Intrexon, Johnson & Johnson, March of Dimes, National 
     Association of County and City Health Officials, National 
     Birth Defects Prevention Network, National Association of 
     Pediatric Nurse Practitioners, National Council of La Raza, 
     National Environmental Health Association, National 
     Foundation for Infectious Diseases, National Hispanic Medical 
     Association, National Medical Association.
       National Network of Public Health Institutes, National 
     Organization for Rare Disorders, National Partnership for 
     Women & Families, National Recreation and Park Association, 
     Novavax, Inc., Nurse Practitioners in Women's Health, OraSure 
     Technologies, Inc., Oregon Public Health Association, 
     Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society, Pediatric Policy 
     Council, Public Health Institute, Research!America, Resolve: 
     The National Infertility Association, Save Babies Through 
     Screening Foundation Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of 
     America, Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine, Society for 
     Pediatric Research, Society for Women's Health Research, The 
     Arc, The Newborn Foundation, Trisomy 18 Foundation, Trust for 
     America's Health.

  Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentlewoman from 
Florida (Ms. Wasserman Schultz), the ranking member of the 
Appropriations Subcommittee on the Legislative Branch.
  Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Mr. Speaker, I urge the House to take 
meaningful action to address the public health crisis that the Centers 
for Disease Control recently called scarier than we originally thought, 
and to support the President's request for supplemental funding for the 
Zika virus as outlined in H.R. 5044, the FY16 Zika supplemental 
appropriations.
  I thank Appropriations Ranking Member Nita Lowey and Labor, Health 
and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies Subcommittee 
Ranking Member DeLauro for their ongoing leadership to help protect our 
constituents.
  More than 120 Floridians now have the Zika virus, including 36 
pregnant women. Last week there were an estimated 157 pregnant women in 
the continental United States and 122 more in the territories who have 
contracted Zika.
  The House must take real action to protect our citizens. It is an 
outrage that we are not adequately responding to the calls of public 
health officials at the Federal, State, and local levels who are 
clanging the alarm bells, imploring Congress to act.
  Last week the House approved a Zika bill that is absolutely 
unacceptable. The bill the House passed would raid existing public 
health accounts, a dangerous precedent to set for appropriately 
responding to public health crises. This is an approach that Dr. Fauci 
of the National Institutes of Health, the so-called Zika czar, has 
called illogical. Furthermore, it only authorizes use of funds through 
September 30th. Let me assure you that

[[Page 7439]]

mosquitos carrying the Zika virus do not adhere to a congressional 
calendar.
  The Republican bill does nothing to specifically help Puerto Rico 
where Zika is wreaking the most havoc and where close to 1,000 people 
have been infected.
  We need more funds now to equip our local health centers with testing 
kits. We need to assure the National Institutes of Health that there is 
sustained funding to develop a vaccine as well as a cure, and we need 
to protect our constituents. That is our responsibility.
  It continues to baffle and frustrate so many of us that the majority 
wishes to address this crisis, this public health crisis, by combatting 
Zika through robbing Peter to pay Paul. That is irresponsible. It is 
immoral. And the majority will have to look in the eyes of the mothers 
who have contracted the Zika virus beyond the point of which we will 
have lost control of the ability to contain this virus and this public 
health crisis, look those mothers in the eye and explain why they did 
nothing to ensure that their babies were not born with birth defects. 
It is unconscionable, and we need to act now.
  I urge the House to support the full request for funds and vote 
``no'' on the previous question.
  Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Mr. Speaker, what is unconscionable is to make charges that are 
simply untrue, and to suggest that there is money that has not been 
deployed that would otherwise have been spent is untrue. Everything the 
administration has wanted to spend, it has been able to spend.
  Now, we hear a lot of talk about raiding funds. Let's talk about 
raiding funds. The administration took $500 million out of emergency 
response money--I believe in December or earlier this year--and 
redirected that to the global climate fund. That is money that was set 
aside that could have been used for Zika. Instead, it is in a global 
climate fund. The administration, in its own budget, took $40 million 
out of the Ebola fund and directed it into a worthy cause, malaria 
suppression. So we don't have objection, but the idea that this money 
isn't used is untrue.
  Now, when we hear discussions about the Ebola money, that is money 
that was not to be spent in the next weeks or the next months, but in 
future years. We don't even know if it is enough or if it is too much. 
So the idea that using some of it now in an immediate emergency is 
wrong with the idea and the commitment that that would be replenished 
later, as needed, is the responsible thing to do.
  As for NIH funding, in the Zika bill that this House passed, there 
are $230 million that fully funds the NIH's request for vaccination 
research for all of next year. So, again, the idea that money is not 
available and they don't know what to do if we pass this legislation is 
untrue.

                              {time}  0945

  So I would just suggest again we look at the real difference here. It 
has nothing to do with Zika response. It has everything to do with 
whether or not you want to pay for it when you have the money available 
or you just want to add another $1.9 billion to the national credit 
card.
  It is thinking like that that got us into a situation where we were 
running $1.4 trillion deficits when my friends were in control on the 
other side. Where we still have a $450 billion, roughly, deficit for 
this fiscal year--and it will go up next year--we ought to be doing 
this in a prudent way.
  Now, Zika response does not happen in a single day. It is something 
that will last, frankly, over multiple months and years. The 
administration's request for $1.9 billion is not for just today. It is 
for at least a period of 2 years.
  So they have the money they need right now. The bill provides the 
next amount of money they need, and we will provide additional money in 
the course of the appropriations process.
  I want to assure everybody that nothing will not be done because the 
money was not available. To date, the administration has been able to 
do everything it wanted to do. This debate that we are having here 
today is actually another step in that process.
  This moves us toward conference. My friends probably look on the 
Senate bill with more favor than they do the House bill. Fair enough. 
We will go to conference with the Senate. So the process is underway. 
It is moving as it should.
  When the administration asked for emergency funding, they immediately 
got a response from Chairman Rogers, saying: Spend whatever you need to 
spend right now. We will back you up. We have made good on that 
commitment. We are going to continue to make good on that commitment.
  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from 
New York (Ms. Lowey).
  Mrs. LOWEY. As my colleague knows, I have great respect for the 
distinguished chairman of the Labor-HHS Subcommittee, for which we 
don't even have a number right now, so we don't know how much we have 
to spend.
  But I also would like to respond to your comments about we have 
enough now, we may have enough next year. We don't in the United States 
of America respond to crises on the installment plan. As you well know, 
Dr. Frieden and Dr. Fauci have said: This is the request. We need the 
money.
  This isn't extra money that we are requesting. This is what the 
experts have requested to address this crisis now.
  Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, let me just again make clear so that 
everybody understands this that this House Republican Zika bill 
provides less than one-third of the funds requested by the President to 
respond to the Zika threat. The House bill also cuts the request for 
research and development of vaccines, treatments, and diagnostics by 
$132 million, or 28.4 percent.
  The House bill does not replace the more than $40 million taken from 
States and cities for public health and emergency preparedness that HHS 
was forced to move into the Zika response due to the inaction by 
Congress. The House bill also does not replace the more than $500 
million taken from Ebola funds that HHS was forced to move into Zika 
response due to Congress' inaction.
  Finally, to make matters worse, the House bill rescinds $622 million 
to pay for the Zika package, including taking an additional $352 
million from Ebola. So the total being taken from Ebola efforts under 
the House Republican approach reaches nearly $900 million.
  Now, I appreciate the fact that we don't want to keep on adding to 
our national credit card, but we have no problem adding tens of 
billions of dollars to the national credit card for war.
  Well, this is also a war, a war for the health and welfare of the 
American people and for the health and welfare of many women and 
children in this country. This is a big deal. This is an emergency. 
Shame on us for not stepping up to the plate and doing what is right.
  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Mr. Speaker, there has been a great deal of discussion this morning 
about the Ebola fund and how it is being used and in what ways it is 
going to be used. Let me just go back and make a few points to clarify 
that situation.
  When Congress acted, it appropriated almost $6 billion for Ebola. 
That money was to be spent over years. It wasn't really clear whether 
it was too much or, frankly, not enough. We simply didn't know.
  Now, the reality is, even after the amounts of money that my friend 
has talked about that have been shifted from Ebola to deal with Zika, 
that fund still has over $1.7 billion in it, more than enough to 
finance all the planned activity not only for this fiscal year, but all 
of next fiscal year.
  This is a multiyear fund. When you are in an emergency, it makes 
sense to take money like that and move it over, particularly with the 
assurance that that money will be replaced, as needed, in the regular 
appropriations process.
  The administration itself is doing the same thing. In its own budget, 
it proposed taking money out of the Ebola

[[Page 7440]]

fund and spending it on something else that it thought was more 
immediate. So the idea that this is somehow unprecedented or different 
than what the administration is doing is simply not true.
  Now, the reality is--again, my friends seem to imply or perhaps 
believe that there is something that hasn't been done to date that the 
Federal Government wanted to do on Zika. That is not true.
  They have had the funds to do everything they have wanted to do. They 
will continue to have the funds to do everything they want to do. So to 
suggest that somehow they are not being funded is just not the case.
  Frankly, we have effectively in the Zika bill advance funded money 
for the NIH to actually begin research and have given them all the 
money in that bill they asked for for next fiscal year on the vaccine 
side of this.
  So we will continue to work the process. We will continue to make 
sure that the resources are available to fight Zika because we all 
believe it is a danger. We will continue to do it in a responsible way 
by using the funds that are available, putting them on an immediate 
problem, and replenishing accounts as we need to.
  Again, I remind my friends that that is something the administration 
itself has been doing not only with Ebola funds, but with other funds, 
when it has moved emergency response money to the global climate fund. 
I mean, goodness, that was $500 million that, had it been left there, 
would have been available right now for Zika for the response in other 
parts of the world.
  So it is easy to get lost in the thicket of numbers here and this 
much from this pot and this much from that pot.
  The reality is, number one, everything that the Federal Government 
has wanted to do to date they have had the money to do.
  Number two, it has been paid for.
  Number three, we are proposing to continue that, making sure they 
have all the funds that are needed, as needed, but we pay for them.
  Number four, we are actually moving the process forward to sit down 
with the Senate by passing this rule and the underlying legislation and 
going to conference and actually hammering out a common bill that will 
be acceptable to all sides.
  I appreciate the concern. I know it is genuine, quite frankly, but I 
also know that we are acting and acting effectively to deal with the 
problem.
  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from 
California (Ms. Pelosi), the Democratic leader.
  Ms. PELOSI. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding and for 
his forceful arguments against this reckless rule that is before us 
today.
  I rise, Mr. Speaker, in strong opposition to the rule and, really, in 
a state of wonderment, wonderment about how on earth this Congress of 
the United States can be so insensitive to a challenge to the American 
people.
  It is our responsibility to honor our preamble to the Constitution, 
to promote the general welfare. That is in the preamble of our 
Constitution, which we take an oath to defend.
  The distinguished gentleman from Oklahoma, whom I respect, said just 
be patient. No. No. Ninety-four days since the President of the United 
States asked for the amount of resources necessary to address the Zika 
crisis, an amount of money that was requested by the scientists, 
documented by the urgency of this challenge for the research and for 
the prevention and for the resources needed to address this public 
health emergency.
  I rise not only as the House Democratic leader, I rise as a mother 
and a grandmother, and I speak to parents and grandparents in this body 
because that is all I am allowed to speak to.
  The questions that I have for you are: How can we ignore the 
President's scientifically based request expressed in the words of Dr. 
Fauci, the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious 
Diseases at the National Institutes of Health, a person, a healthcare 
leader in our country, a researcher, a scientist who has been described 
by President George Herbert Walker Bush as a hero--as a hero--in his 
work for the American people and their public health?
  Dr. Fauci says: If we don't get the money that the President has 
asked for, the $1.9 billion, that is going to have a very serious 
negative impact on our ability to get the job done.
  Another scientist, Dr. Tom Frieden, Director of the Centers for 
Disease Control, the public health agency to stop this threat, said: 
Never before in history has there been a situation where a bite from a 
mosquito can result in devastating fetal malformation.
  Testimony went on to say that we are talking about children with 
irreversible brain damage who will never be able to walk, talk, see, or 
hear, children whose care over a lifetime is estimated to cost more 
than $10 million.
  The money is one thing. The devastation to that child and to that 
family is far more consequential. So the $1.9 billion is a great deal 
of money.
  It is an emergency. It is a small price to pay to prevent 
irreversible brain damage in our children. It is a small price to pay 
instead of saying to families: Don't think about having children now 
because of this epidemic.
  The Republicans are treating the threat of Zika with so little 
seriousness that they decided to use the crisis as an opportunity to 
eliminate protections for the water that our children drink.
  The so-called Zika Vector Control Act the Republicans are adding to 
this package this morning that they are asking you to vote for is 
nothing but a longstanding and craven repackaged Republican effort to 
gut the Clean Water Act. It is a pesticide Trojan horse that will do 
nothing to protect Americans from Zika.
  This is really a dishonoring of our responsibility to protect and 
defend our fellow Americans. As our distinguished member of the 
Committee on Rules mentioned, this is a defense issue. It is about 
protecting the American people.
  This proposal today puts forth one-third of what the President has 
asked for--one-third. People say: Aren't you happy with one-third of a 
loaf? It is not one-third of a loaf. It is one-third of a shoe. You 
cannot get there from here with one-third.
  It is really an insult to the scientists who have spoken out. 
Actually, it is one-third of the President's request, but it is one-
fifth of what the CDC has requested for the public health activities.
  We must elevate the importance of the public health responsibility 
that we have. If we had a natural disaster, FEMA has funds to come to 
the rescue of the American people. That is our compact with the 
American people, to help them in ways that they could never help 
themselves because of the scope of the challenge.
  This is no less a challenge. In fact, it would probably result in 
more loss of life, malformation of unborn children. On top of that, 
think of the negative impact it will have, distrust to travel to 
certain regions in our country.
  This is so reckless. Just when I thought I had seen it all on the 
part of the Republicans in the Congress to disregard meeting the needs 
of the American people, along comes this incomprehensible explanation 
to anybody why this might be a proposal worthy of the floor of the 
House, worthy of the public health challenge to the American people, 
worthy of our concerns about the American people.

                              {time}  1000

  My Republican colleagues, you have outdone yourselves today. What you 
are doing is reckless. In this bill, we should be meeting this 
challenge the way we meet emergencies: with adequate resources, which 
will end up saving money because they will be an investment in the 
health of the American people. It has been over 90 days since the 
President has made the request.
  I will just say this one other thing. It is not our role to instill 
fear, but we have to face the challenge in a very clear-eyed way. The 
virus from this mosquito is sexually transmitted. We have no idea--it 
could be as long as 18 months--how long it would reside in a gentleman 
who might be bitten by the mosquito. It could be over a year, it

[[Page 7441]]

could be shorter, but it is not one night.
  Secondly, if you get bitten by this mosquito when you travel 
someplace where it might be pervasive, you not only get bitten 
yourself, you bring it home. Again, it is sexually transmitted.
  It is transmitted in even more pervasive ways. Any other garden 
variety mosquito that would bite you, who have already been bitten by 
the other mosquito, now is a carrier of that virus. We turn garden 
variety mosquitoes into an army on the assault of the public health of 
the American people.
  So, again, as a mother and a grandmother, as a parent, and for the 
fathers and grandfathers who serve here, think of the children, think 
of the risk, think of the responsibility that we have. Think of the 
irresponsibility of this bill before us today and the reckless 
disregard for public health in our country that the Republicans are 
putting forth in this legislation, and vote ``no.''
  Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, may I inquire as to how much time we have 
remaining?
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Oklahoma has 13 minutes 
remaining. The gentleman from Massachusetts has 11 minutes remaining.
  Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Mr. Speaker, I want to begin by saying I also have a great deal of 
respect for the distinguished minority leader. She used in her remarks 
and made the point that the President had asked for a number of things.
  Last year, the President asked for a billion dollars more for the 
NIH. We said: You know, we didn't think you asked for enough, so we are 
going to give you $2 billion.
  Somehow, that seems to get lost.
  Last year, the President sent down his request for the Centers for 
Disease Control. We said: You know, we don't think you are spending 
enough on public health, Mr. President. We are going to spend more 
money than you asked for.
  This year, when the President submitted his budget, he decided: I am 
going to take a billion dollars of discretionary spending away from the 
National Institutes of Health and spend it someplace else.
  We said: No, Mr. President; we think that is pretty reckless.
  By the way, my Democratic friends agreed with that, too.
  We said: We are not going to let you take a billion dollars of 
discretionary money away from the NIH and spend it someplace else. We 
are going to keep it right there. And, by the way, we are going to put 
more money than you asked for in this agency when the bill comes out, 
and we are probably going to do the same thing for the Centers for 
Disease Control.
  So, to suggest that the President hasn't gotten what he has asked for 
is to, frankly, misstate the facts.
  We have had a great deal of mention that the President has had the 
request for 94 days. What we have not had is one shred of evidence 
that, in those 94 days, he has not had the money to do every single 
thing he wanted to do. Indeed, the chairman of the committee urged him 
to start spending money immediately to do that. So there has been no 
loss of effort, and the bill in front of us now funds it for the rest 
of the fiscal year. It also funds the research on the vaccine at the 
NIH into next year.
  So, again, I am just going to simply disagree with my friend that 
money has not been available. It has been available; and, frankly, to 
the appropriate agencies, more money has been available than the 
President has asked for. More money will be available next year than he 
asked for.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. 
Sessions), the distinguished chairman of the Rules Committee and my 
good friend.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman, not only a 
member of the Rules Committee, but an appropriator who is directly in 
line with and understands the needs of not only the American people as 
it relates to the NIH, but also the funding mechanisms.
  Mr. Speaker, I stand up to really disagree with the gentlewoman from 
California. To call my party and our efforts reckless and 
irresponsible, I believe, is unfair.
  I believe it is unfair because, last night at the Rules Committee, we 
had this virtually same discussion. And the discussion started with me 
when I said that I had Republicans and Democrats, only Monday, with the 
Director of NIH, Dr. Francis Collins, and the Director of the Institute 
of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Dr. Anthony Fauci, and we talked 
directly about this issue.
  What we learned, Mr. Speaker, is that there was a request for 
additional money and that the NIH had some $600 million that was 
sitting in a fund from Ebola that had not been completely used. A 
determination was made--including the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. 
Cole), Hal Rogers, and Nita Lowey, who were engaged in the decision--
that said we will allow the money to be switched over if you would like 
to do that. Switch it over and use that money for this specific event 
that we are now looking at. What happened is they used the money very 
quickly. They accelerated spending the money--that is fine; we want 
them to do what they need to do--some $600 million.
  As soon as that was known, the gentlewoman Mrs. Lowey, the gentleman 
Mr. Rogers, and the gentleman Mr. Cole went about looking at a request 
to fill for the next 5 months what would be some $1.2 billion that 
would be spent just this year remaining--we are in May--just until the 
end of September.
  The President asked for $1.9 billion for 5 years, and we gave $1.2 
billion of that $1.9 for 5 months. We are accelerating the money that 
is necessary to NIH.
  The minority leader outlined how terrible this destructive behavior 
can be to a child, to an embryo. We agree. But to suggest that 
Republicans are reckless is not fair.
  What is fair to say is that we are responding appropriately, we are 
responding immediately, and we are putting it together before we are 
gone next week on a district work period. We are doing it this week. We 
are moving it as quickly as possible. If we weren't, we would be 
accused of the reverse, evidently.
  Mr. Speaker, the Republican Party, the gentleman Mr. Cole, the 
gentleman Mr. Rogers, and our Speaker care about people. We are doing 
the right thing.
  Now, in the Rules Committee, the gentleman Dr. Michael Burgess, 
acknowledged some other frailties that he sees from the 
administration's point, and that would be: Where is the alert to 
cities? Where is the administrative action to say let's do something 
about alerting travelers? Where is the information that is going to 
public health officials? Where are we preparing ourselves to look at 
what would happen in Brazil? What is the administration doing other 
than just accusing us of not spending more money?
  Mr. Speaker, we all live in glass houses. We need to look at this the 
same way, and calling each other names is not a way to get there.
  So, Mr. Cole will be responsible and reasonable; Hal Rogers, the 
chairman of our Appropriations Committee, will responsible. I said to 
my committee last night, as quickly as we need to get together, the 
Rules Committee will come in, even if it is on an emergency basis, to 
handle this, based upon a request. And that is what we are going to do.
  Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentlewoman from 
Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro), the ranking member of the Appropriations 
Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and 
Related Agencies.
  Ms. DeLAURO. Mr. Speaker, I just will say, what my colleague, Mr. 
Sessions, just said: that the NIH had $600 million in unused Ebola 
money, that really is false. The NIH has used all of its Ebola funds 
that Congress allocated. So the statement of the gentleman from Texas 
is not factual.
  The Zika virus is a public health emergency. It is a crisis, and we 
must treat it as such. As of last week, there were almost 1,400 
confirmed cases of Zika in the United States and its territories. 
Nearly 300 of them are pregnant women. And one person has died.
  This Congress, when we appropriate money for defense or defense 
spending

[[Page 7442]]

or for wars, Republicans say: Listen to the generals in the field; they 
are the ones who know best. Well, we are in the midst of a war against 
the Zika virus, and we should be listening to the generals and the 
experts in the field. And who are they? They are at the Centers for 
Disease Control; they are at the National Institutes of Health; and 
they are the scientists in our country.
  We need to give them the resources that they need, and they have told 
us that they need $1.9 billion. We should do the right thing. We should 
fund their request. One-third of that request, which is what the House 
Republicans have proposed, is not adequate.
  Typically, microcephaly occurs in 0.02 percent to 0.12 percent of all 
U.S. births, but The Washington Post reported yesterday that, among 
Zika-infected pregnant women, that risk is as high as 13 percent.
  This summer, every woman who is pregnant or trying to get pregnant 
will be afraid: afraid to go out on the patio, afraid to take your kids 
to the Little League, afraid to go to a barbecue. It is our duty here 
to do everything that we can to ease those fears, to stop this disease 
from spreading any further.
  We must not put American women in a predicament of choosing whether 
or not they should get pregnant or, if they are already pregnant, 
wondering whether or not their baby is going to be okay.
  Ron Klain, the Ebola czar, wrote in The Washington Post: ``It is not 
a question of whether babies will be born in the United States with 
Zika-related microcephaly--it is a question of when and how many. For 
years to come, these children will be a visible, human reminder of the 
cost of absurd wrangling in Washington, of preventable suffering, of a 
failure of our political system to respond to the threat that 
infectious diseases pose.''
  According to the CDC, pregnant women are already facing unacceptably 
long delays in learning Zika results. CDC Director Tom Frieden has said 
that experts estimate a single child with birth defects can usually 
cost $10 million to care for--or more. That says nothing about the life 
of that child with microcephaly. They cannot eat; they cannot speak; 
they cannot walk.
  I do not often quote Senator Marco Rubio, but last week, he said:

       It is a mistake for Congress to try to deal with the Zika 
     virus on the cheap. If we don't spend money on the front end, 
     I think we are going to spend a lot more later, because this 
     problem is not going away.

  We could not agree more. We have stolen $44 million from our States 
to deal with this crisis, and the Republican bill does not reimburse 
our States for the money that they need for dealing with emergencies 
such as this.
  We should defeat the previous question, and we should consider the 
Lowey-DeLauro-Wasserman Schultz amendment and fully fund the 
President's request of $1.9 billion. It is the responsible and moral 
thing to do.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Lucas). The time of the gentlewoman has 
expired.
  Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I yield the gentlewoman an additional 30 
seconds.
  Ms. DeLAURO. Months from now, when the results of our inaction become 
apparent, we will ask ourselves: Why did we delay? Why did we wait?
  We must take appropriate action now. We must reject the previous 
question. We must do what is the morally right thing for the people of 
this country who put their faith and trust in us to come and represent 
their best interests and the public health.
  Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, may I inquire as to how much time remains?
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Oklahoma has 7 minutes 
remaining. The gentleman from Massachusetts has 6\1/2\ minutes 
remaining.
  Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from 
Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), the Democratic whip.

                              {time}  1015

  Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  I want to thank Ms. DeLauro, the ranking member of the Subcommittee 
on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies.
  Mr. Speaker, this is the story in The Washington Post. It is front 
page. It is about the crisis that we confront, about the danger to 
Americans' health, about the dangers that young children will be born 
with microcephaly.
  Dr. Frieden, the head of our communicable disease operation and 
defense force, if you will, says it will cost $10 million per baby born 
with microcephaly; $10 million per child. That does not count the 
heartache that will be counted.
  I want to tell my friend, Mr. Cole--and he is a dear friend and a 
good legislator--the action you take today belies the representation 
you have made.
  What do I mean by that?
  If there is enough money now, as Mr. Cole argues, why take this 
action?
  This was not scheduled earlier this week. This was not have a rule 
until 9:30 last night. So if the gentleman's proposition is correct, 
that there are sufficient funds right now, we don't need to act on this 
bill today.
  So why, my friends, are we acting on it today?
  Because the public believes we ought to act. And the Republicans are 
trying to protect themselves against the attack, that they took no 
action until 94 days into the President's request because, if Mr. Cole 
is right, we need not worry: there is plenty of money available.
  But they know the American people don't agree with that. So 9:30, in 
the dead of night, they passed this rule, brought it to the floor so 
that they can say: Oh, we have acted.
  Nothing, my friends, will happen as a result of what we do today. The 
Senate passed a bill with 69 votes, $1.1 billion, not taking from Ebola 
defense, not taking from the other health needs of America, as our bill 
does, but saying: this is an emergency.
  Now, very frankly, my friends on your side of the aisle, Mr. Cole, 
when you want $18 billion from defense, you have no problem not paying 
for it. You take it from OCO, which is not scored. No problem. But when 
the President asks for $1.9 billion, about a tenth of that, well, my 
goodness, this is a problem. It is, after all, not the Taliban. It is 
not Iran. We have to protect against that. It is a health crisis in 
America, and we have fiddled for 94 days.
  If, in fact, Mr. Cole's representation is correct, there is no need 
to act. But if the actions that they are taking speak loudly that, yes, 
there is a need to tell the American people: we get it; there is a 
crisis; we are going to act, the problem is nothing will happen as a 
result of this action, other than a bill will go over to the Senate, 
with which the Senate does not agree. They passed a bill with 69 votes. 
Half of the Republicans, all of the Democrats, said we need the $1.1 
billion.
  Now, the President asked for $1.9 billion, but what they didn't do is 
steal from Ebola, steal from other health priorities.
  And I hear the gentleman talking about how much money is out there, 
but if that is true, why did we need to act in the dead of night last 
night and today, just as we walk out the door?
  We have not dealt with Zika. We will not have dealt with Zika.
  We haven't acted on the Puerto Rican debt. We haven't acted on a 
budget resolution. We haven't acted on the Flint water crisis. We 
haven't acted on criminal justice reform. And we haven't acted on the 
Voting Rights Act.
  This is a cover vote. Vote ``no.''
  Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Mr. Speaker, I want to reply to my very good friend from Maryland, 
whom I have not only great esteem for, but, frankly, great personal 
affection for, and I want to respond to his question. This is not a 
cover vote.
  First of all, the main item here is actually veterans and military 
construction that is over $83 billion; that, through normal order, is 
moving forward. Now, to also move the Zika bill with it makes a lot of 
sense.
  Frankly, one of the things in this bill--and I disagree with my 
friend's characterization--we want to make sure that misguided 
environmental regulations don't stop us from deploying pesticides that 
we may need. That

[[Page 7443]]

is in this bill. That is pretty important to move forward.
  The funding is also important. Now, my friends seem to forget, again, 
the long record here of who has been willing to support the NIH and who 
has been willing to support the CDC. We gave the NIH twice what the 
President asked for in additional new money last year. That is being 
spent right now, by the way. We also gave the Centers for Disease 
Control more money than the President asked for. This year, when the 
President tried to take $1 billion of discretionary money away from the 
NIH, both Republicans and Democrats on the Appropriations Committee 
said: No, Mr. President, we are not going to let you raid NIH and take 
money away and weaken the healthcare apparatus of the United States.
  I made the point then--and I can assure my friends we will be happy 
to back it up--that we will put more money into NIH this year for next 
fiscal year than the President actually requests.
  Now, in terms of Zika, the moment there was a crisis, the chairman of 
this committee, Hal Rogers, immediately sent a letter to the President 
and said: Spend all the money you need. There are whole pots of it in 
different spots. We will replace the dollars as they are needed.
  So taking money out of funds that were meant to be spent over years 
and using them in immediate crises is not unusual. Indeed, the 
administration itself has done this twice in recent months: once taking 
$500 million from the Emergency Response Fund in the Department of 
State and spending it on climate change, instead of an emergency 
response; $40 million in their own budget out of Ebola money that they 
were going to spend on malaria money.
  I don't condemn them for that, by the way. They just simply were 
using something and they said: This is an account that is going to take 
several years. We want to deal with malaria right now. Let's take some 
of that money. If we have got a problem later, we will fix it.
  That is all that is going on here. At the end of the day, the amount 
of resources that are necessary will be made available. The only 
difference here is one side wants to pay for it and not add to the 
national debt. The other side really doesn't think that is a big 
consideration. That is a debate worth having. I don't mind having that 
debate.
  But we heard the word ``reckless'' earlier. It is also shameless to 
exploit a crisis for political gain, and I think we are seeing some of 
that here today. Some of it is sincere, but some of it is great 
theatrics. It doesn't change the fact that when the President made his 
request, he has had every dime he has needed for that 94 days.
  When my friends say the Republican bill only provides a third of the 
money, they somehow forget a third had already been provided. This is 
the second third. The rest of it will come. The money is to be spent as 
the administration requested, not over weeks or days, but over months 
and years. That is how they have proposed to deploy it. So giving them 
the money as they need it instead of writing them a blank check and not 
even paying for it ahead of time seems to us to be the prudent and 
responsible thing to do.
  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.
  Mr. Speaker, Dr. Thomas Frieden, the Director of the Centers for 
Disease Control and Prevention, just recently said in response to the 
way this House has handled funding for the Zika crisis:
  ``This is no way to fight an epidemic. Three months is an eternity 
for control of an outbreak. There is a narrow window of opportunity 
here and it's closing. Every day that passes makes it harder to stop 
Zika.''
  So whether it is Dr. Frieden, or Dr. Fauci, or any of our Nation's 
leading scientists or medical experts who all say that what is going on 
here today is grossly inadequate, my friends on the other side of the 
aisle seem to think that they know more than our scientists and medical 
experts; at least they have convinced themselves that they know more.
  Well, they haven't convinced me and they haven't convinced the 
majority of the American people who are watching this in disbelief.
  This is an emergency. This is a crisis. Why aren't we acting more 
aggressively?
  I include in the Congressional Record a letter to Congress from the 
Director of the Office of Management and Budget, and our National 
Security Adviser, in which they talk about the importance of multi-year 
funding, long-term funding because they have multiyear commitments that 
they need to make to the private sector in order to prioritize Zika, in 
order to develop vaccines and other prevention to protect the American 
people.

                                              The White House,

                                   Washington, DC, April 26, 2016.
     Hon. Paul D. Ryan,
     Speaker, House of Representatives,
     Washington, DC.
       Dear Speaker Ryan: As you are aware, on February 22, the 
     Administration transmitted to Congress its formal request for 
     $1.9 billion in emergency supplemental funding to address the 
     public health threat posed by the Zika virus. Sixty-four days 
     have passed since this initial request; yet still Congress 
     has not acted.
       Since the time the Administration transmitted its request, 
     the public health threat posed by the Zika virus has 
     increased. After careful review of existing evidence, 
     scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 
     (CDC) concluded that the Zika virus is a cause of 
     microcephaly and other severe fetal brain defects. The Zika 
     virus has spread in Puerto Rico, American Samoa, the U.S. 
     Virgin Islands and abroad. As of April 20, there were 891 
     confirmed Zika cases in the continental United States and 
     U.S. territories, including 81 pregnant women with confirmed 
     cases of Zika. Based on similar experiences with other 
     diseases transmitted by the Aedes aegypti mosquito--believed 
     to be the primary carrier of the Zika virus--scientists at 
     the CDC expect there could be local transmission within the 
     continental U.S. in the summer months. Updated estimate range 
     maps show that these mosquitoes have been found in cities as 
     far north as San Francisco, Kansas City and New York City.
       In the absence of action from Congress to address the Zika 
     virus, the Administration has taken concrete and aggressive 
     steps to help keep America safe from this growing public 
     health threat. The Administration is working closely with 
     State and local governments to prepare for outbreaks in the 
     continental United States and to respond to the current 
     outbreak in Puerto Rico and other U.S. territories. We are 
     expanding mosquito control surveillance and laboratory 
     capacity; developing improved diagnostics as well as 
     vaccines; supporting affected expectant mothers, and 
     supporting other Zika response efforts in Puerto Rico, the 
     U.S. territories, the continental United States, and abroad. 
     These efforts are crucial, but they are costly and they fall 
     well outside of current agency appropriations. To meet these 
     immediate needs, the Administration conducted a careful 
     examination of existing Ebola balances and identified $510 
     million to redirect towards Zika response activities. We have 
     also redirected an additional $79 million from other 
     activities. This reprogramming, while necessary, is not 
     without cost. It is particularly painful at a time when state 
     and local public health departments are already strained.
       While this immediate infusion of resources is necessary to 
     enable the Administration to take critical first steps in our 
     response to the public health threat posed by Zika, it is 
     insufficient. Without significant additional appropriations 
     this summer, the Nation's efforts to comprehensively respond 
     to the disease will be severely undermined. In particular, 
     the Administration may need to suspend crucial activities, 
     such as mosquito control and surveillance in the absence of 
     emergency supplemental funding. State and local governments 
     that manage mosquito control and response operations will not 
     be able to hire needed responders to engage in mosquito 
     mitigation efforts. Additionally, the Administration's 
     ability to move to the next phase of vaccine development, 
     which requites multi-year commitments from the Government to 
     encourage the private sector to prioritize Zika research and 
     development, could be jeopardized. Without emergency 
     supplemental funding, the development of faster and more 
     accurate diagnostic tests also will be impeded. The 
     Administration may not be able to conduct follow up of 
     children born to pregnant women with Zika to better 
     understand the range of Zika impacts, particularly those 
     health effects that are not evident at birth. The 
     supplemental request is also needed to replenish the amounts 
     that we are now spending from our Ebola accounts to fund 
     Zika-related activities. This will ensure we have sufficient 
     contingency funds to address unanticipated needs related to 
     both Zika and Ebola. As we have seen with both Ebola and 
     Zika, there are still many unknowns about the science and 
     scale of the outbreak and how it will impact mothers,

[[Page 7444]]

     babies, and health systems domestically and abroad.
       The Administration is pleased to learn that there is 
     bipartisan support for providing emergency funding to address 
     the Zika crisis, but we remain concerned about the adequacy 
     and speed of this response. To properly protect the American 
     public, and in particular pregnant women and their newborns, 
     Congress must fund the Administration's request of $1.9 
     billion and find a path forward to address this public health 
     emergency immediately. The American people deserve action 
     now. With the summer months fast approaching, we continue to 
     believe that the Zika supplemental should not be considered 
     as part of the regular appropriations process, as it relates 
     to funding we must receive this year in order to most 
     effectively prepare for and mitigate the impact of the virus.
       We urge you to pass free-standing emergency supplemental 
     funding legislation at the level requested by the 
     Administration before Congress leaves town for the Memorial 
     Day recess. We look forward to working with you to protect 
     the safety and health of all Americans.
           Sincerely,
     Shaun Donovan,
       Director, The Office of Management and Budget.
     Susan Rice,
       National Security Advisor.

  Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, what we are doing here today represents a 
failure, a miserable failure. This represents a failure of this 
Congress to do everything humanly possible to protect the people of 
this country. It is shameful. It is unbelievable.
  A rigid, right-wing ideology is trumping common sense, is trumping 
doing what is right, what I think most of my colleagues on the other 
side of the aisle understand.
  We need to aggressively fight this crisis. And here is the deal: if 
we don't get this right, all the talk about fiscal responsibility and 
controlling the debt goes out the window because the cost of this 
crisis getting out of control is astronomical.
  Mr. Speaker, my friends on the other side of the aisle can explain 
away or rationalize or justify this inadequate response all they want, 
but it is reckless and irresponsible.
  And for the life of me, I can't understand why on this issue, as we 
are confronted with this health crisis, we all can't come together and 
do what is right.
  When it comes to wars halfway around the world, nobody cares about 
paying for it; but when it comes to a war to confront a healthcare 
epidemic, crisis, to confront an epidemic, my friends can't find the 
money.
  Please vote ``no'' on the previous question so we can actually have 
an amendment to properly fund this. I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' 
on the previous question and ``no'' on the rule.
  I yield back the balance of my time.
  Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.
  I want to respond quickly to some of my friend's points, Mr. Speaker, 
and I want to go back to the essential reality that we are facing.
  Number 1, last year, when the President asked for $1 billion more for 
NIH, we said: That is not enough. We are going to give you two.
  Last year the President submitted a request for CDC. We looked at it 
and said: You know, it is not enough. You evidently don't care enough 
about public health, Mr. President. We are going to spend more money.
  This year he brought us a request to try and take $1 billion of 
discretionary funding away from NIH. My friends on the other side were 
as appalled as we were. We said: No, Mr. President, you are not going 
to take $1 billion out of NIH in a dangerous time of disease. We are 
not only going to keep that money there, we are going to put more 
money, additional money than you asked for.
  We said the same thing about the CDC, and so we will do it.
  In terms of what has been done, the minute the Zika virus appeared 
and the administration asked for emergency money, Hal Rogers, the 
chairman of the committee, responded and said: Spend whatever it takes.
  And, indeed, the administration has done that.
  My friends seem to suggest that there is something that hasn't been 
done, yet they never tell us what that one thing is.
  The reality is the administration has had the money to do everything 
it has wanted to do. This bill provides more money on top of that. Our 
Senators are proposing even more, so we go to conference to figure out 
the appropriate amount and whether or not and to what degree it should 
be paid for. I would hope it is all paid for. It should be because we 
have the funds to do that.
  So to suggest that there is some sort of failure of funding is simply 
not true, and my friends know it is not true. To suggest that we are 
not willing to put the money here would suggest that recent history has 
no relevance, because we have put more money here than the President 
asked us to put, and we have committed to put even more going forward.
  The only difference here, and what drives my friends into a frenzy, 
is that we actually want to pay for this. They simply don't. They 
think, let's just put another $1.9 billion on the national credit card. 
This is a great excuse to do that.
  Well, we are not prepared to do that, but we are prepared to respond 
to the legitimate needs of the American people and use the resources 
that we have.
  So, Mr. Speaker, in closing, I agree with my colleagues on the other 
side. We should address the issue. We disagree with the other body on 
how to do it, and we will go on from there.
  Mr. Speaker, I look forward to working with my colleagues in 
conference on these important issues.
  The material previously referred to by Mr. McGovern is as follows:

          An amendment to H. Res. 751 Offered by Mr. McGovern

       On page 2, line 4, insert ``as modified by the amendment 
     specified in section 2 of this resolution'' before the 
     semicolon.
       At the end of the resolution, add the following new 
     section:
       Sec.2. The amendment referred to in section 1(a) is as 
     follows: Strike divisions B and C and insert the text of H.R. 
     5044 as introduced.
                                  ____


        The Vote on the Previous Question: What It Really Means

       This vote, the vote on whether to order the previous 
     question on a special rule, is not merely a procedural vote. 
     A vote against ordering the previous question is a vote 
     against the Republican majority agenda and a vote to allow 
     the Democratic minority to offer an alternative plan. It is a 
     vote about what the House should be debating.
       Mr. Clarence Cannon's Precedents of the House of 
     Representatives (VI, 308-311), describes the vote on the 
     previous question on the rule as ``a motion to direct or 
     control the consideration of the subject before the House 
     being made by the Member in charge.'' To defeat the previous 
     question is to give the opposition a chance to decide the 
     subject before the House. Cannon cites the Speaker's ruling 
     of January 13, 1920, to the effect that ``the refusal of the 
     House to sustain the demand for the previous question passes 
     the control of the resolution to the opposition'' in order to 
     offer an amendment. On March 15, 1909, a member of the 
     majority party offered a rule resolution. The House defeated 
     the previous question and a member of the opposition rose to 
     a parliamentary inquiry, asking who was entitled to 
     recognition. Speaker Joseph G. Cannon (R-Illinois) said: 
     ``The previous question having been refused, the gentleman 
     from New York, Mr. Fitzgerald, who had asked the gentleman to 
     yield to him for an amendment, is entitled to the first 
     recognition.''
       The Republican majority may say ``the vote on the previous 
     question is simply a vote on whether to proceed to an 
     immediate vote on adopting the resolution . . . [and] has no 
     substantive legislative or policy implications whatsoever.'' 
     But that is not what they have always said. Listen to the 
     Republican Leadership Manual on the Legislative Process in 
     the United States House of Representatives, (6th edition, 
     page 135). Here's how the Republicans describe the previous 
     question vote in their own manual: ``Although it is generally 
     not possible to amend the rule because the majority Member 
     controlling the time will not yield for the purpose of 
     offering an amendment, the same result may be achieved by 
     voting down the previous question on the rule . . . When the 
     motion for the previous question is defeated, control of the 
     time passes to the Member who led the opposition to ordering 
     the previous question. That Member, because he then controls 
     the time, may offer an amendment to the rule, or yield for 
     the purpose of amendment.''
       In Deschler's Procedure in the U.S. House of 
     Representatives, the subchapter titled ``Amending Special 
     Rules'' states: ``a refusal to order the previous question on 
     such a rule [a special rule reported from the Committee

[[Page 7445]]

     on Rules] opens the resolution to amendment and further 
     debate.'' (Chapter 21, section 21.2) Section 21.3 continues: 
     ``Upon rejection of the motion for the previous question on a 
     resolution reported from the Committee on Rules, control 
     shifts to the Member leading the opposition to the previous 
     question, who may offer a proper amendment or motion and who 
     controls the time for debate thereon.''
       Clearly, the vote on the previous question on a rule does 
     have substantive policy implications. It is one of the only 
     available tools for those who oppose the Republican 
     majority's agenda and allows those with alternative views the 
     opportunity to offer an alternative plan.

  Mr. COLE. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time, and I 
move the previous question on the resolution.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on ordering the previous 
question.
  The question was taken; and the Speaker pro tempore announced that 
the ayes appeared to have it.
  Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.
  The yeas and nays were ordered.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to clause 8 of rule XX, further 
proceedings on this question will be postponed.

                          ____________________