Prohibiting Federal Funding of Planned Parenthood Federation of America--Motion to Proceed

Floor Speech

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Mr. TESTER. Thank you, Madam President.

Once again, this 114th Congress is proving its priorities are completely misguided. Last week the House of Representatives adjourned for a 6-week recess instead of taking up the Senate 6-year highway bill. That bill would strengthen our transportation infrastructure and reauthorize the Export-Import Bank, which helps businesses compete globally and returns hundreds of millions of dollars to the Treasury. By skipping town, the House forced another short extension, delaying long-term investments and denying States and businesses long-term certainty.

Today we are debating whether to defund Planned Parenthood and deny thousands of women access to primary health care. Outside of these walls, this debate was settled decades ago. Most voters--including over 70 percent of Independents--oppose this effort because they see it for what it is: an aggressive assault on women's health care.

If you don't believe me, let me tell you the story of one of my constituents named Liz from Billings. Planned Parenthood has been Liz's primary health care provider for 30 years. The doctors and nurses at her local facility found precancerous cells and got her the treatment she needed to prevent a life-threatening disease. Despite a complicated medical history, she was able to start a family thanks to the prenatal care she accessed at Planned Parenthood. Now she has a daughter of her own and trusts the providers of Planned Parenthood to provide critical health care to her and her family. But Liz isn't alone.

In 2013, in my home State of Montana, over 15,000 men and women were patients at Planned Parenthood for everything from affordable primary care to cancer screenings, to family planning services. Four out of ten women who receive care at a title X-funded health care center consider it their only source of health care. Taking away this funding is political, shortsighted, and outright dangerous. Unfortunately, it is not their only attempt to rob women of their health care choices. As it sits now, next year's U.S. House appropriations bill for Health and Human Services eliminates all of the title X family planning health clinics. While that is the kind of shortsightedness we have come to expect from the House in recent years, the Senate Labor-HHS appropriations bill isn't much better because it significantly cuts title X funding. It cuts teen pregnancy prevention funding by 81 percent. In a large rural State like Montana, access to quality health care is always a serious challenge. Without a serious effort to recruit more doctors and nurses, we could soon be facing a crisis-level shortage of qualified medical providers.

This bill is designed to score political points, no doubt about it. It is certainly not designed with women's health or public health in mind. This is crazy. We need to be giving the American people more options when it comes to their health care, not fewer.

I would urge my colleagues to stop the political gaming and simply vote no on this bill.

I yield the floor.

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