Providing for Consideration of H.r. 2824, Increasing Opportunity and Success for Children and Parents Through Evidence-based Home Visiting Act; Providing for Consideration of H.r. 2792, Control...

Floor Speech

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Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding. I associate myself with his remarks about everything we need to do by the end of the fiscal year, which is the end of this week; in particular, reauthorization of CHIP that has helped so many millions of kids get health insurance and get the care that they need.

I rise today, though, to talk about the MIECHV bill, which is up today, and to express my deep disappointment that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have chosen to walk away from yet another opportunity to work on a bipartisan basis. We could extend this program on a bipartisan basis just the way we started it. It is really a success story.

The evidence-based models are proven to deliver results for kids and families in every single State. Investments in MIECHV are investments in the success of America's children and their futures. Peer-reviewed evidence proves that MIECHV leads to improvements in health outcomes for mothers and babies, school achievement, parenting practices, and overall early childhood development.

On top of all that, MIECHV is a great return on investment for Federal dollars. For example, for every Federal dollar in the Nurse- Family Partnership, we get $5.70 in return. Sadly, this bill that the House is considering today would set MIECHV back. The partisan proposal would make it more difficult for MIECHV models in all of our States to continue their success stories.

Under current law, MIECHV only has enough funding to reach 6 percent of eligible families. But instead of working together to help the program reach more children, this bill curtails the reach. It cuts the funding and, as my ranking member said, it imposes a harmful State- matching requirement that could force some of these home health visit programs to shut down altogether.

It is really a shame that when you are talking about healthy starts for kids, we can't work together on both sides of the aisle. I would hope we would defeat this legislation and come back and do what we have done before on this program, work together to have a robust piece of legislation.

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