Department of Defense and Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Appropriations Act, 2019--Conference Report

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I am a Republican because I am a conservative. I am a conservative because I believe the Constitution and the ideals that it asserts on behalf of the American people are worth protecting, worth defending, even when they are untimely, even when they are unpopular, and especially for the vulnerable, for the marginalized, and for the forgotten among us.

Equal rights, equal opportunity, equal justice under the law, equal dignity under God--we fail as Americans when we violate these ideals, when we neglect them to whatever degree, when we exclude some number of our neighbors from their God-given share of our common inheritance, when we declare in the interest of expedience and in defiance of our own national creed that some people somehow are less equal than others.

Such was the cruelty of our Nation through our laws, long-visited on African Americans, Native Americans, immigrants, and ethnic minorities, on women, on the disabled, and on religious minorities, including religious minorities like my own forebears as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Happily, this is no longer the case. Happily, all of these groups-- who, taken together, comprise the vast majority of all Americans--were at different times in our history affirmatively brought under the protection of our laws. This work of inclusion, of expanding the circle of legal and constitutional protection, was not a natural, organic, spontaneous, evolutionary process; it was the product of hard work--the work of vigilant citizens, activists, and lawmakers who affirmatively, aggressively, painstakingly advanced the cause of justice at every opportunity, even against the entrenched forces of the political status quo.

Republicans in this Congress have undertaken such efforts on behalf of certain priorities--in particular, the tax relief and spending increases that are poised to yield a budget deficit of nearly $1 trillion this year.

But no such legislative progress has been achieved advancing the right to life nor the plight of those denied it. For the second straight year of unified Republican governance-unified pro-life governance-Congress's annual spending bills will include no new reforms protecting unborn children or getting Federal taxpayers out of the abortion business.

The House version of this Health and Human Services spending bill included multiple reforms. It denied taxpayer funds to the largest abortion provider in the country, Planned Parenthood. It eliminated title X family planning grants, which cross-subsidize abortion providers. It prohibited Federal funding of research on aborted fetal tissue. It included the Conscience Protection Act protecting pro-life people and groups from funding discrimination. None of these modest, commonsense spending reforms survived the House-Senate negotiations-- none of them. None was made a priority by the people empowered to set the priorities.

The authors of this bill defend their $1.3 trillion compromise. And of course, this being Washington, I know, as is always the case, that in this case, it could always be worse. But before this bill passes with an overwhelming bipartisan supermajority as its base of support-- despite it being mostly unread by its supporters--someone ought to speak up for the Americans whom this legislation conspicuously leaves behind.

The best measure of any government or any policy or proposal can be measured according to its impact on the least among us. Too often today, Washington acts as though ``the least among us'' refers to our most vulnerable incumbents rather than our most vulnerable constituents. This $1.3 trillion spending bill exemplifies that very confusion and fails that very test. Under this bill, neither the unborn nor taxpayers are any more protected from the abortion industry than they were under President Obama and a unified Democratic Congress.

I understand that fighting on contentious issues comes with a cost. I understand that it is not easy. But other things come with a cost too. It is not just this that comes with a cost--so, too, does not fighting on them, especially in the rare moments when we could win.

This bill represents a significant opportunity missed--and missed at a time when we can't be sure how many more we will be given going forward, how many more opportunities like this one we might have.

Some causes are worth fighting for, even in defeat--the God-given equal rights and the dignity of all human beings paramount among them.

The arc of history may, as I hope, bend toward life, but only if we bend it. I oppose this legislation, but I do so neither in anger nor in sadness; rather, I do so in hope, looking forward to another bill, another time in the not-too-distant future, one that stands up for those Americans who asked nothing more than the chance to one day stand up for themselves.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source