Providing Amounts for Further Expenses of the Committee on Energy and Commerce in the One Hundred Fourteenth Congress
Floor Speech
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Mrs. WATSON COLEMAN. Madam Speaker, I am disappointed that we are here today asking the American taxpayers to waste another $800,000 on an unnecessary, dangerous investigation.
This select panel was formed based on fraudulent videos created by anti-abortion extremists to attack Planned Parenthood, an organization that has always fought for women's rights and provides healthcare services to 3 million women and men each year.
I was proud to be the first Member of Congress to speak out against these videos immediately after their release. And here we are, a year and a half later, with no evidence of wrongdoing after 17 separate investigations in three House committees, 13 States, and one grand jury. Yet Republicans continue to chase false, inflammatory allegations, at a severe cost to advances in medicine and to the safety of those involved in this lifesaving research.
Panel Republicans have conducted themselves in ways reminiscent of Joe McCarthy's abusive tactics: witnesses have been harassed and intimated during testimony; names of researchers, students, clinical personnel, and doctors have been released publicly, placing their lives in great danger; misleading ``exhibits'' have been manufactured; critical documents have been withheld from Democrats; and Republicans have continued to fan the flames of anti-abortion extremism with their inflammatory rhetoric.
Let us not forget the horrible tragedy that occurred in a Colorado Planned Parenthood clinic where a gunman shot 12 people and killed 3, echoing the same anti-abortion rhetoric used by Republicans to this day.
What this investigation truly is is an attack on women's rights and women's access to legal health services. The select panel comes at a time when Republicans have repeatedly voted to defund Planned Parenthood, eliminate family planning services, and restrict access to abortions.
This investigation dishonors this institution and hurts the American people that Congress is elected to serve. Let's put an end to the witch hunt, stop wasting taxpayer dollars, and reject this resolution.
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