Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2016
Floor Speech
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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I rise to speak as in morning business. Zika Virus
Mr. President, the statement just made by the Senate Democratic leader on the Zika challenge to the United States is well documented. What is well documented is that the President of the United States came to Congress 4 months ago and said: We are facing a public health threat. Do something.
For 4 months the Republican-led Congress has done nothing. Meanwhile, the mosquitoes carrying this deadly virus are on the march.
This is a report from the New York Times from last week which I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record in its entirety.
Officials Are Surprised by Zika Rate in Puerto Rico (By Catherine Saint Louis)
Roughly 1 percent of recent blood donors in Puerto Rico showed signs of active infection with the Zika virus, suggesting that a substantial portion of the island's population will become infected, federal health officials reported on Friday.
From April 3 to June 11, testing of 12,700 donations at blood centers in Puerto Rico identified 68 infected donors, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Over all, about 0.5 percent of donors had active Zika infections, but the prevalence rose to 1.1 percent in the week ending June 11. The virus, carried by the yellow fever mosquito, has been linked to birth defects in infants and neurological problems in adults.
``There are a lot more Zika-positive people than we would anticipate this early'' in the outbreak, said Phillip Williamson, an author of the C.D.C. report and the vice president of operations at Creative Testing Solutions, a blood-donor testing laboratory.
Based on prior experience, Dr. Williamson said he would not have expected so many Zika-infected donors until late June or at early July.
The C.D.C. has estimated that as many as a quarter of the island's 3.5 million people may become infected with the Zika virus this year.
``It's possible that thousands of pregnant women in Puerto Rico could be infected,'' Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the agency's director, told Reuters on Friday, leading to ``dozens or hundreds of infants being born with microcephaly in the coming year.''
Zika-contaminated donations are removed from the blood supply. In the continental United States, where local transmission of the virus has yet to be reported, most blood banks are not yet using the experimental screening test used in Puerto Rico, which was made by Roche Diagnostics.
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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, this article is entitled, ``U.S. Officials Are Surprised by Zika Rate in Puerto Rico.''
It goes on: ``Roughly 1 percent of recent blood donors in Puerto Rico showed signs of active infection with the Zika virus, suggesting that a substantial portion of the island's population will become infected, federal health officials reported on Friday.''
They go on to cite the statistics that have been analyzed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and here is what they concluded:
Based on prior experience, Dr. Williamson [of the CDC] said he would not have expected so many Zika-infected donors until late June or early July.
The CDC has estimated that as many as a quarter of the island's 3.5 million people may become infected with the Zika virus this year.
``It's possible that thousands of pregnant women in Puerto Rico could be infected,'' Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, [the CDC's] director, told Reuters . . . leading to ``dozens or hundreds of infants being born with microcephaly in the coming year.''
What is the Republican majority waiting for in the U.S. Senate? What is the Republican majority waiting for in the U.S. House of Representatives?
Don't they believe this is a serious public health threat? If they don't, they are ignoring the obvious--evidence given to us by the leading public health defense agency in the United States of America, if not the world. Over and over again, they tell us this is a deadly threat. While the infection rates increase and the infections among pregnant women increase and the number of these infants who are afflicted by serious birth defects increase, the Republicans in the House and Senate are too busy focusing on Donald Trump to pay attention to this public health crisis. It is about time they accepted the reality, and the reality is they were elected to lead, they were elected to protect, they were elected to serve, and when it comes to the Zika virus, they are doing none of this. They are standing back, twisted in knots, trying to figure out how to take money away from other public health challenges to deal with this, and 4 months have passed. These mosquitoes are spreading this infection across Puerto Rico, and soon we will know more in the United States.
Senator Reid suggested there were 2,000 Americans with the Zika virus infection; 400--if I recall his numbers correctly--pregnant women, and there is already evidence of babies here being born afflicted because of this infection. What is the Republican majority waiting for? Fighting Terrorism
Mr. President, the Senate Republican leader came to the floor earlier this morning to speak to us about ISIL and terrorism. I hope he understands there is a political consensus on the following statement: We should do everything in our power to prevent any terrorist attack in the United States and everything in our power to stop the spread of terrorism overseas, including and especially when it comes to ISIS.
What Senator Reid asked of Senator McConnell is the right question. You come with criticism of our current policy, but you offer nothing. There is no suggestion by the Senate Republican leader that we should be sending invading armies again. We did try that in Iraq, and the consequences are well known. We lost 4,844 lives--American soldiers who gave their lives in Iraq. Over a half million returned with injuries, some of them with injuries that will be with them for a lifetime. The cost to the United States in terms of death, injury, and the problems that these veterans face will go on for generations. Is the Senator from Kentucky suggesting we should do that again? I hope not.
What we are doing is joining up with Iraqi forces to defeat ISIS. We are using the best of American intelligence and guidance to make sure they are effective and there is evidence of success.
The statement put in the Record from Senator Carper goes into detail. Senator Reid alluded to it in his speech. It talks about the things we have done and the success we have had. The notion that we can do this overnight, that we just invade with a large U.S. Army--if that is what Senator McConnell is suggesting, I would suggest he go back in history and reflect on his own vote for the invasion of Iraq, which I disagreed with at the time and still do. It was a mistake for us to invade.
Then there is the question about the gun issue, particularly when it comes to assault weapons. Do you know what the terrorists have told us? They basically said to us: Go ahead and fight the last war. Focus on what happened on 9/11. Put all your resources at airports. Be ready to stop anyone who wants to take over an airplane. It is a worthy goal, but while you are diverted with that goal, fighting the last terrorist war, we are opening up new fronts, and one of those fronts very specifically is that the terrorists warned us: We know where to buy assault weapons in the United States. We know about your gun shows. We know about your Internet sales, and that is where we are going to turn.
They are calling on their aspiring terrorists around the world to find access to assault weapons and turn them on innocent Americans. We saw the devastating impact of that in Orlando two weeks ago.
Because of the filibuster last week that was initiated by Senator Murphy of Connecticut and sustained by Senator Booker of New Jersey and Senator Blumenthal of Connecticut and 37 others who came to the floor to support them, we forced a vote on Monday night on 4 gun safety issues. None of them passed. It was established that they needed an extraordinary majority. That was the decision made by the Republican leadership. While we came close to a majority on many of these votes, we didn't have the 60 votes necessary to make them law.
Luckily, we have one Republican Senator on the Republican side who showed extraordinary courage. Senator Collins of Maine has stepped up to try to craft a measure to keep deadly weapons out of the hands of terrorists in the United States. Do the American people agree with Senator Collins? Only by a margin of 90 percent, they believe she is right. They believe we are right--that we should do something to defy the National Rifle Association and make it more difficult for those who are suspected terrorists to buy firearms, especially assault weapons. Well, she is working on it, and I am working with her. Many of us are supporting her effort--a bipartisan effort, and one that is long overdue.
When the Senator who is the Republican majority leader comes to the floor and says we need to do more to fight terrorism, what is he doing to fight terrorism? When it comes to assault weapons and those who are purchasing them in the United States--like the deadly killer in Orlando--he can help us. The Kentucky Senator who is the Republican leader can help us by making America safer and keeping automatic weapons, assault weapons, and semiautomatic weapons out of the hands of would-be terrorists. That would mean defying the National Rifle Association, and many on the Republican side are scared to death of that--just scared to death of what that organization might do to them if they join Senator Collins, if they join Senator Feinstein, in trying to stem the rise of terrorism from these assault weapons in the United States.
I have said it before and I will say it again: There is no self- respecting hunter, sportsman, or even a person looking for self-defense who can defend these weapons that are being sold in the United States.
There was a Snapchat video of one of the victims in Orlando, the last 9 seconds of her life before she was killed. She turned on her cell phone, and in 9 seconds, 17 rounds were fired by this aspiring ISIS terrorist who had access to an assault weapon. Assault weapons belong in the hands of law enforcement and the military. They shouldn't be so easily accessible by those who would turn them on innocent Americans, whether it is in a classroom in Newtown, CT, or in a nightclub in Orlando.
I would say to the Senator from Kentucky that if he wants to stop terrorism, start at home. Start at home by preventing terrorist access to these deadly weapons that have no effective use when it comes to sport and hunting and that are just being purchased, sadly, for collections reasons or for those who want to misuse the weapons to kill innocent people.
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