Washington is out of Step with America

Floor Speech

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Mr. GUTIERREZ. Mr. Speaker, as Donald Trump and Ben Carson have
turned up the volume with more and more outrageous statements and
policy proposals, Members of Congress have been trying to keep up.

Now, Republicans in the House not only have to play to the small, but
extremely vocal, segment of the electorate that feels Washington is
``out of step with the American people,'' but they have another
audience to woo--each other--because a lot of our colleagues are
currently running for leadership positions.

But is it really Washington that is out of step with America or is it
the most vocal, most active, and most vitriolic elements of the
Republican base that are out of step with America?

Last week's NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll was pretty startling.
It shows in issue after issue that on the positions adopted by the
leading GOP candidates, vast majorities of Americans disagree with
Republicans. On abortion restrictions, immigration, LGBT equality,
racial diversity, and reproductive health, some in the Republican base
demand we go back to the Dark Ages. But it is not, in fact, the
direction that most Americans want to go.

For most Americans, ``Mad Men'' was a good TV drama set before racial
integration, before the women's movement really took hold, before gays
and lesbians dared come out of the closet, and before we removed racial
quotas from immigration. But some in the Republican Party aspire to
turn it into a reality TV show.

The latest throw-down from the right has been over Planned Parenthood
and reimbursing this respected organization for health services it
provides to women across the country.

In many cases, Planned Parenthood is the only source of affordable
and accessible reproductive health care, contraception, HIV and STD
testing, cancer screenings, and basic health care for women.
Under Federal law, our tax dollars cannot pay for abortions, and
there are no credible claims that this is being violated. Under law,
abortion is legal in the United States, despite all of the restrictions
imposed and proposed by my Republican colleagues. But this goes further
than abortion rights and a woman's right to control her own health care
and reproduction.

Some Americans here and around the country are, frankly, not too
comfortable with the whole family planning thing. In my family, I have
two daughters who are brilliant and whom I trust to make decisions for
themselves. They were born 8 years apart and not by accident.

My wife and I planned her pregnancies around her career as an
investment banker and had our children when we were ready. That is an
option that opened the world of opportunity and self-determination to
my wife that my mother never had. Puerto Rican women in this country in
my mother's day had one thing forced on them by the government, and
that was sterilization, period.

So when I hear talk about shutting down the government to appease the
far right on Planned Parenthood, I think of the progress we have made
from my mother's generation to my wife's generation and now to the
world in which my daughters live.

It seems to me that we should not be looking for ways to limit
choices women have, to force them into back alleys or across State
lines for health care or to treat them as if only wise men in
Washington can make decisions for the women of America.

But that desire to turn the clock backwards, to undo the progress of
our lifetimes, and to punish America for evolving over time is
basically at the heart of the Republican agenda, as driven by their
most active and vocal base. Republicans run for office and legislate as
if they want gay people back in the closet, as if they want Latinos and
Asians to become invisible, as if they wish women were just in the
kitchen or in the bedroom, as if we could go back to those golden days
before the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, Brown v. Board of
Education, when everything was separate and some people were more equal
than others.

Well, with all due respect to Mr. Carson and Emperor Trump, every
poll indicates that the American people are not with them, and that is
especially true of young people in America. Dr. Carson must be
nostalgic for the anti-Catholic days before John Kennedy was elected
because he is now raising doubts that people of certain religions are
qualified to serve their country as President.

Senator Cruz must look at the old days when we turned away refugees
from Europe because of their religion, as we did in the 1930s and 1940s
when anti-Semitism gripped this country. Now he wants to send Muslims
back to die in Syria.

And now there is Donald Trump. He wants to deport about a quarter of
the 50 million Latinos in the United States. If mass deportation was good
enough for President Eisenhower, he feels it should be good enough for
America today.

I will agree with one leading candidate, Jeb Bush, who recently said
that ``stuff happens.'' Stuff does happen. A lot of stuff has happened
since the 1950s when I was born and the 1960s when I grew up in
America.

Our laws and our culture have evolved to become more inclusive, and
we have a more diverse and egalitarian society because of it. Many
Republicans call that stuff the problem. I call that stuff progress.

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