Providing Amounts for Further Expenses of the Committee on Energy and Commerce in the One Hundred Fourteenth Congress

Floor Speech

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Ms. DelBENE. Madam Speaker, I rise in strong opposition.

This resolution provides an additional $800,000 of taxpayer money to a select investigative panel that should never have been created in the first place. As a member of that panel, I can tell you it has been nothing more than a bully pulpit for the majority to spread extreme anti-choice falsehoods and fabrications, with no basis in reality. This so-called investigation has repeatedly shown contempt for the facts and disdain for the truth.

Instead of carrying out a fair and evidence-based process, the panel has spent the last year publicly targeting women's healthcare providers, bullying scientists and medical students, delaying medical research, and trying to cut off lines of scientific inquiry, all because the majority opposes a woman's constitutional right to choose.

Now we are voting to double the panel's budget. It is ridiculous. No one in this Chamber should be condoning this kind of harassment and intimidation, let alone approving hundreds of thousands of additional taxpayer dollar to do so. This has been a brazenly partisan and ideological witch hunt, and it should have been shut down months ago.

Rather than wasting another $800,000 on this dangerous panel, Congress could use that money to provide more than 270,000 school lunches to low-income students, purchase nearly 12,000 textbooks to make higher education more affordable for college students, or purchase more than 3 million diapers to help new mothers care for their babies.

But instead, that money will go toward intimidating doctors, harassing researchers, and delaying the progress of science. It is shameful.

We shouldn't throw good many after bad by passing this legislation. I urge my colleagues to vote ``no.''

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