Pelosi Remarks at Press Event Calling on House Republicans to Take Urgent Action to Confront Zika

Contact: Drew Hammill/Caroline Behringer, 202-226-7616

Washington, D.C. – Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, House Appropriations Committee Ranking Member Nita Lowey (D-NY), Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), Congresswoman Frederica Wilson (D-FL), and public health and disability experts held a press event calling on Speaker Ryan and House Republicans to take long-overdue, urgent action to confront the Zika virus – now that Republicans have returned from their record-breaking reckless recess. Below are the Leader’s opening and closing remarks followed by the question and answer session:

Leader Pelosi’s Opening Remarks

“Where’s Jackie? She’s coming. We have a very special guest here today – five-and a half month-old Jackie.

“Good morning everyone, as you know, in February, President Obama sent to Congress an urgent request for emergency resources to protect the American people against Zika. It is a growing public health emergency with almost 17,000 Americans, including nearly 1,600 pregnant women, already confirmed cases of Zika. The facts are these: the Department of Health and Human Services has already repurposed $670 million dollars for Zika out of other critical initiatives to protect the American people. Secretary Burwell has said, ‘We have exhausted our ability to even provide short-term financing to help with Zika.’ The CDC is on pace to virtually exhaust all of the Zika domestic response funding by the end of September. CDC Director Tom Frieden has said, ‘The cupboard is bare.’ Basically, we are out of money. We need Congress to act.

“As the Republican Congress returns from the longest summer recess in the modern era, we are joined by public health and disability experts to renew the call for immediate action for Zika. My colleagues and I are honored to be joined today by Dr. Georges Benjamin, American Public Health Association, Dr. LaMar Hasbrouck, National Association of City and County Health Officials, Katherine Neas of Easterseals, Emily Holubowich – did I say it right, Jackie?

[Laughter]

“Emily Holubowich and her beautiful daughter, Jackie. As we hear from our special guests, I want to say how proud I am to be joined by the Ranking Member on the Appropriations Committee, Congresswoman Nita Lowey of New York, Ranking Member of the Subcommittee of HHS – Labor, Health, and Human Services, [and Education Appropriations], Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, Ranking Member of her Subcommittee, Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida and Congresswoman whose district has been most directly impacted so far Congresswoman Frederica Wilson of Florida. With that, I am pleased to yield to our distinguished Ranking Member on Appropriations, Congresswoman Nita Lowey and thank her and my colleagues for their relentless – relentless, strong work on behalf of getting this funding for Zika and so many other issues. I yield to Congresswoman Lowey.”

Leader Pelosi’s Closing Remarks

“Thank you, Emily, and thank you, Jackie. How eloquent Jackie is. Isn’t she? Doesn’t she deliver the message so well? Accompanying Emily, her mom. Thank you all – to our guests who are here, to my colleagues for their leadership. Emily mentioned that we should Google what the consequences are that could be of Zika. People have asked us, Members have asked us: why don’t you show the pictures? It’s just too horrible. We could never subject families who are affected by having the world see the suffering that they are going through. It’s just beyond disability. That would be almost a minor word compared to just how transformative being infected by the Zika virus can be to a child.

“Anyone who knows me knows that I am a mother of five, grandmother of nine children. I’m Italian American. We worship at the shrine of children, of babies. It’s our lives. It’s the center of our universe. To have a public health emergency that takes its biggest toll on children challenges our conscience in a very different way. Dr. Benjamin says the science is clear, the urgency is clear. We must act upon it and Congress must act.

“Congresswoman Wasserman Schultz said how could our colleagues look these families in the eye when they have been delinquent in delivering what is necessary to meet the challenge. I have another question for them, Congresswoman Wasserman Schultz: how can they look themselves in the eye? How can they look themselves in the eye when they had the power in their Caucus to make a clean bill come to the floor. Instead, they are cannibalizing our budget for investments in how to meet other health needs and public health challenges that our country faces. So, this is a disgrace. It’s a shame. And we need to have a bill that is clean that comes to the floor – and by clean I mean no poison pills. There has to be a recognition, as Congresswoman Wilson said, about how long does this live in the semen of a man, that this is sexually transmitted. I had a reporter say to me: ‘It isn’t sexually transmitted, it can be sexually transmitted.’ I’d like to know what the difference is in that reporters’ mind.

[Laughter]

“It can be? Then it is. And would you want to take that chance? So, you know, forget the politics – as has been said – Cathy Neece said so beautifully, and wasn’t it remarkable the other consequences? Lifetime, even unknown to us in the short term, the consequences of this. If it costs millions of dollars to support a child who has been so affected, only a couple hundred children affected offsets – it’s going to be $1.2 billion offsets that cost. We don’t want one child to be affected. We should feel guilty about every child that is affected. But the fact is: $1.9 billion is a small price to pay for the public health of our country and the individual well-being of these babies.

“So, when it comes to babies, just consider some of us here lionesses. You hurt our cubs, you’re in big trouble. So when the Speaker says, ‘give me a break,’ – is that what he said at his press conference when you asked him, the press asked him ‘why haven’t you passed the bill?’ ‘Give me a break’? No, let’s give the babies a break, Mr. Speaker. Let’s pass this bill.

My colleagues will be pleased to take any questions you have.

***

Q: Madam Leader, just briefly on this: talking to other people on the other side of the aisle, talking to people in the Appropriations process just in this past day that we’ve been back here, I’ve heard many say: well, we understand the urgent need, you guys want this bill passed yesterday, but it’s probably going to take till the very end of the month or however long we’re here to get this done. What do you say…

Leader Pelosi. First of all, let me just say this is not a new issue. We had a Steering and Policy Committee hearing on this, in the Spring, on this subject. And Dr. Hasbrouck, you would be pleased to know that the Mayor of New Orleans was there and talked about the importance of a local – recognizing the role of local government and states, etcetera. And Dr. Fauci talked to us about what could lie ahead months ago. And at that time, we were asking the Speaker for an emergency bill that could come to the floor in a matter of minutes – emergency spending bill come to the floor then months ago. So now, they said: oh, we are going to go through the regular appropriations process and we are going to do it that way. And when we even agreed to compromise to agree to the Senate language which was less than the Administration needed and science demanded, they said ‘no’ even to our agreeing to their compromise. But the one thing he did say to me is: understand this, we are not going to have any funding for contraception in the bill, on a sexually transmitted infection.

Nita, did you want to speak to that?

Congresswoman Lowey. I was just going to briefly say before we break for break after months of us requesting for $1.9 billion, we had a conference committee that lasted two minutes. The table was set, the chairs were there, we opened the conference committee and closed the conference committee. So the fact that they say this takes time, people are suffering and if you don’t care about public health, what about the economy of Florida? And it’s why so many of, I think all, the officials in Florida are calling on this committee. So I want to make it clear, we had a conference committee, senate and house, we sat down, greeted each other, and adjourned.

Q: But my point is, they have dedicated…

Leader Pelosi. Well, it will have to happen in three weeks. It has to happen in three weeks. And when it happens in three weeks, it has to be for a year. We can’t, in three weeks, say: we’re doing this until December. When it happens in three weeks, it has to be for a year because if you’re having serious scientific research – Dr. Benjamin will speak to that – you need to have lead time and guarantee that funding will be there beyond December. Dr. Benjamin.

Dr. Georges Benjamin. Let me ask you are you implying that mosquito season will be over and not to worry about it?

Q: I’m not implying it. I said, they’re talking about the legislative time that it’s going to take in spite of all this. They’re not even having a conference meeting about this until Friday.

Dr. Georges Benjamin. Yeah well okay, this is not over. This is not over. Mosquito season doesn’t end until later in this winter and we’ll see this again. I was a state health officer in Maryland during West Nile virus. We know what’s going to happen. We understand this pattern. We have seen this before. You know, New York this year, Maryland, most of the east coast the next year, and across the whole United States in the third year. It’s in Florida. We’re going to see it. It’s going to continue. So, this idea that somehow there’s some magic way for us to escape this if that’s what people are thinking – I don’t know if that’s what they’re thinking – they’re just wrong.

Congresswoman Wasserman Schultz. You know, I remember during the appropriations process when the three of us introduced an amendment every markup, one of the criticisms of Hal Rogers and the Republicans was that: well, this is not going to be even funding that would be provided right away even if we put this funding in an appropriations bill, you know it won’t happen until the end of the fiscal year. Well, we agree. That’s why we should put an emergency supplemental bill on the floor today and we could pass it, the Senate could pass it and send it to the President so we can make sure, one: that the vaccine research funding doesn’t run out, that we don’t slow it down and that it doesn’t get cut off; [and two:] that we have vector and mosquito control that continues.

Let’s remember that, as Dr. Hasbrouck just said, mosquitos don’t know the difference between district 23 and district 24. They don’t know the difference between the boundary of the state of Florida and the state of Georgia or the state of Arizona. Mosquitos migrate, and eventually, this is going to spread and spread as we predicted and as public health officials predicted, would spread from the Americas to the United States and it will spread across the country if we don’t act quickly.

Q: Madam Leader, I wanted to ask – yesterday, Speaker Ryan issued a statement saying that Democrats are playing politics and that you had blocked funding to…

Leader Pelosi. It’s simply not true. First and foremost, I wish he were here and we could ask him together: did I not agree that we would agree to the Senate language which we thought fell short – but as a compromise we would go forward? And we would even cooperate on opioids because we did not want to support the opioids bill because it had no funding. But rather than make an issue of that, let’s just calm the waters, go for the Senate language – which it had already passed the Senate – no.

But the fact is, as Chad was asking, okay, we have three weeks in September. Let’s get this done now. But when we get it done now, it’s not a three-month to December. It’s one year because based on medical research that is necessary for the vaccine research, etc., requires some predictability and assurance that the resources will be there and not to be held hostage to the ideology of the Republicans when it comes to the issue of contraception.

I grant them their position on abortion and the rest of that, but contraception? Contraception? Contraception? Really? I mean, we’re talking about mosquitos – but do we need to talk about the birds and the bees at the same time? Does anyone else have a question?

Q: What’s your read on the situation? Are you optimistic that this will ultimately be worked out? Or will it might have to come to some sort of confrontation over the continuing resolution?

Leader Pelosi. Well, I think that Lincoln said it best: public sentiment is everything. And I would hope that instead of just echoing the Republican line – I’ve so heard so many in the press echo what the Republicans have said: “the Administration has not spent the money it has.” It has. It has exhausted every resource. And as I say – cannibalizing very important research, biomedical research with cancer and other things, not to mention a half of a billion dollars or more in terms of Ebola. So, they have said, “The Administration hasn’t spent the money” – they have.

They have put this off for half of a year or more. We could have had an emergency bill long ago – maybe preventing some of the tragedies that have happened since then. But we do have to get this done in the next three weeks. And that isn’t great, but it is what is available to us now. Rosa, did you have something you want to say on that?

Congresswoman DeLauro. Just to go back for a second to Chad – let me give you a couple of examples. If all of a sudden we saw that there was a need for some national security emergency – overseas, Middle East, Afghanistan, wherever, Syria, whatever it is – and our Generals came and said that we need $1.9 billion, we need it immediately, it’s emergency funding, it is about this nation’s national security, protecting the mainland, protecting lives, protecting our troops, it not only would take less than three weeks, people would be stumbling over one another to get to the Floor, to introduce it, to get it passed, to address an issue of national security. The Generals, as Dr. Benjamin pointed out, the Fauci’s, the Frieden’s, the Osterholm’s, the people at Yale, the people at the research triangle in research institutions all over this nation – these are the generals who have said, “This is a national emergency. This will save lives.” And these folks have said “no” – the Republicans have said “no.”

Another very quick example: disaster relief. We cordon off disaster relief. Hurricanes, floods, fires – and we say, “You have a fund. You’ve got $6.7 billion.” It’s an emergency whenever it happens. You do not have to go through a regular budget process. Your money is there, so it can move fast – two weeks, three weeks, whatever it is, to get it out to families to take care of themselves. Why is this not regarded as a public health emergency that doesn’t have to go through a process to hold up money? Why are we not willing – why are the Republicans not willing to save people’s lives? This is what the emergency is.

Leader Pelosi. Well, one of the reasons is that our budget should be a statement of values. And in our budget, this should be a very high priority for us – what is important to our country, the health and wellbeing of the American people should be a top priority. Clearly, it is not. Tax breaks for the wealthiest people in our country are their first priority – trickle it down, balance the budget by making these cuts, cannibalizing other scientific research. But, let’s put that aside for the moment.

For the moment, we have an opportunity to come to the Floor in a matter of days and weeks to pass legislation that will address the challenge – not fully as the President and science has indicated necessary but nonetheless, address the challenge. It’s very important that it be clean, that it be a full 12 months so that science can work its way and so that we can in conscience address the needs of the American people, do the job they have sent – the American people want Congress to do its job. And we want the Republicans to remove their ideological barrier to funding this Zika challenge. Thank you all very much. And let us thank our specials guests for joining us – Emily, Dr. Benjamin, Dr. Hasbrouck, Katie. Thank you.

# # #