DeLauro Votes Against Continuing Resolution

WASHINGTON, DC (December 21, 2017) – Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (CT-03) today spoke from the House Floor in opposition to the Republican majority's Continuing Resolution before voting against it.

Here are DeLauro's remarks, as prepared for delivery:

I rise to strongly oppose this Continuing Resolution. Yet again, we are punting one of our core obligations as a Congress: funding government programs. The Republican Majority has failed to respond to the needs of the American people. They put services and investments critical to families and our communities at risk, from apprenticeships to education for students with disabilities, child care, afterschool programs that help working families make ends meet, and financial aid for students attending college.

We should be negotiating spending levels for 2018—for both nondefense and defense spending. We should have spent the last two months fulfilling our responsibility as legislators by writing bipartisan bills to fund programs that help the middle class and the vulnerable, support evidence-based scientific research, and help working people get the skills they need to find good jobs with good wages.

Instead, the Republican majority squandered the last two months moving their tax scam, rewarding big corporations, millionaires, and billionaires who wrote the rules to make government work for them. Republicans were their comrades in arms in rigging the game against the middle class.

I am horrified by the majority's decision to put the future of the Children's Health Insurance Program, or CHIP, in jeopardy—kids checkups, their shots, prescriptions, dental and vision care, hospital care, the list goes on. States are beginning to cut children off because of the Majority's delay. The hard-working families who depend on CHIP deserve to know that it will be there for their children for the long-term. How can our Majority go on vacation while millions of children worry about losing their health insurance? This is a disgrace.

This bill also cuts $750 million from the Prevention and Public Health fund, which supports programs such as heart disease and stroke prevention, diabetes prevention, and immunization and vaccination programs. Yesterday, Republicans voted to spend $1.5 trillion of taxpayer money—your money—on tax cuts for millionaires—while today, they are cutting nearly a billion dollars from public health programs that protect everyone. I urge my colleagues to reject this Continuing Resolution, because it fails to meet our obligations to the American people.