Bill Nelson

Mr. NELSON

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. NELSON. Not only is that true, those four things, but then the House of Representatives put it on a very good bill, the MILCON appropriations, and they sent it down here thinking that we were going to have to take it at the eleventh hour with all of those poison pills, which include the Confederate flag.

Mr. NELSON. Of course.

Mr. NELSON. Can the Senator ask that again? I cannot hear.

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, I come to the floor for the purpose of making a unanimous consent request with regard to Zika. I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of H.R. 5243, which is at the desk; that all after the enacting clause be stricken; that the substitute amendment, which is the text of the Blunt-Murray amendment to provide $1.1 billion of funding for Zika, be agreed to; that there be up to 1 hour of debate equally divided between the two leaders or their designees; that upon the use or yielding back of time, the bill, as amended, be read a third time and the Senate vote on passage of the bill, as amended, with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. NELSON. That, of course, I say to the Senator from Illinois, is such a poor, poor choice.

Mr. NELSON. I say to the Senator from Illinois, with 276 cases of infection, with 43 pregnant women that we know of just in the State of Florida, is it any wonder that 5 months ago, when we filed the $1.9 billion request of the administration, my colleague from Florida, my friend who I get along with, the junior Senator, Mr. Rubio, cosponsored the bill with me.

Mr. NELSON. It is a political message that is so reviled by the people of America. They want us to get down to the business. If Senator McConnell had a flood or an earthquake in Kentucky, we would all support him with emergency funding to meet that emergency. We have an emergency now. Why are they adding all of these poison pills, such as those the Democratic leader has just enumerated, in this bill? Mr. President, I think the Senator from Nevada has with his cross- examination exposed exactly what the problem is, and it is too bad. The clock continues to tick. At the end of this week, we will go out. We won't come back until the day after Labor Day, which is in the first week of September. And all along, the Government of the United States is going to have to figure out how it will get the money to the local mosquito control districts and how it will get the money to the drug companies to continue the R&D to find and produce a vaccine and all the other health-related expenses.

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, that is true.

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, reserving the right to object--first of all, did I hear an objection from the majority leader to my unanimous consent request?

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, I would just say to the majority leader that one of the items in his proposal takes money away from Puerto Rico. By seeing the unanimous vote we had--not unanimous--the overwhelming vote last week for the financial assistance plan to help Puerto Rico get out of its financial woes--part of those financial woes is in the health care sector. We know that experts have told us that 20 percent of the population of Puerto Rico is estimated to be infected with the Zika virus by the end of this summer. So there is just one example of why we should not take an approach that is taking money out of the Affordable Care Act and taking money away from family planning, but specifically with regard to its effect upon Puerto Rico. As I shared with the Senate last week, I represent the State that had 11 new cases of the Zika virus last week. Well, lo and behold, we now have 13 more new cases, bringing the total in our State to 276, which includes 43 pregnant women, and that is just one of the 50 States in the Union, not including the territories. The number of cases being reported across the country continues to rise. There have been seven infants born in the United States with Zika-related birth defects, and you know what I am talking about because you have seen the pictures of how, when the virus attacks the fetus in its development, it does not allow the development properly of the head and of the brain. Right now in America, the CDC is monitoring 599 pregnant women. Public health experts estimate that caring for a child born with Zika- related microcephaly could amount to $10 million in medical costs over that child's lifetime. That is just speaking about the dollars; that is not talking about the tragedy. By that estimate, it would cost up to $2 billion to care for 200 children born with microcephaly. That is $100 million more than the amount this Senator and the minority leader had asked for in the first place, reflecting the President's request of $1.9 billion that the experts say is needed to curb the spread of the virus. That request was made 4 months ago, and we still haven't done anything about it. At what point do the majority and the majority leader decide to stop playing these games and simply do what is needed?

Mr. NELSON. Not only that, but with bipartisan support early on in this whole dialogue. And now we are seeing the resistance of the majority leader to take up the very bill that passed with those overwhelming numbers of bipartisan support.

Mr. NELSON. Not only is that true, I say to the Senator, but there is the fact that this is an emergency, which has always been dealt with in the history of this Senate as a bipartisan thing to meet the situation of the emergency, and now this has been used--because it is so urgent to get the appropriations--as a political message and ideological, partisan-driven bill.

Mr. NELSON. Through the Chair, Mr. President, I would answer the Senator. Yes, my family came to Florida right after Florida was acquired as a territory from Spain.

Mr. NELSON

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, I want to say a word on behalf of Senator Merkley. He has a very reasonable compromise on this GMO bill. I wish we would get a chance to vote on it because that is what the Senate is supposed to do--debate and to express our opinions and then vote. A bill that is a compromise, that was put together with great intentions, and yet one that did not go through the regular order, as hard as the negotiations were, and all the good intent--it is just a shame that the Senate is sitting here until--the parliamentary rules allow us to run a certain number of hours, which is going to occur somewhere around 10:30 tonight, to proceed to the voting on this bill. The only expression of those of us who would like Senator Merkley to have a vote is that we got to vote on a motion to table an amendment that is unrelated, and it all has to do with the parliamentary procedure. It is a shame that we can't have the substance of a real debate on a real issue facing the country. Zika Virus Funding Mr. President, as the Senate is biding its time, I can tell you we are not biding our time in Florida on two subjects, the first of which is that in these closing days of the Senate before we recess for the rest of the summer because of the political conventions--we had another 11 cases of the Zika virus yesterday in Florida. There are now well over 250 cases in Florida, and in Florida there are somewhere around 40 pregnant women who are infected with the Zika virus. You know what that means because you have seen the horrible pictures of the babies. When the Zika virus infects a pregnant female, it attacks the growing fetus and stunts the growth of the brain and the head. We are starting to see that now in about six babies born in the United States with microcephaly, three of whom died at childbirth. You can imagine the tragedies for those families in which this is occurring. It could all be done if we would go ahead and develop the vaccine. There is a lot of promising research and development on a vaccine, but that means we need to get money through the National Institutes of Health, NIH, to continue the research. We have a Zika bill for supposedly $1.1 billion that was passed last week in the House, but it is not a serious bill. It has all of these poison pills in it. It has all of these political messages. It is totally partisan. In fact, one of the things it does to fund the so-called Zika bill from the House is to take money from the Medicaid Program in Puerto Rico--the very place that needs it the most right now because 3.5 million American citizens on that island are now at risk of being infected when that mosquito bites or by sexual transmission. Another part of the bill doesn't allow birth control through Planned Parenthood. Well, isn't that inimical to the very reason that you want to stop the pregnancy so that you don't have this tragedy? Yet the House bill is eliminating those funds. This is what I hope, and this is what I did this morning. I wrote to the majority leader, Senator McConnell, and asked him if he would take up the Zika bill that we passed in the Senate. It was bipartisan. It was overwhelmingly supported. It was not the $1.9 billion the President requested, but it was $1.1 billion. Take that up, send it out of here to the House so that before Congress adjourns at the end of next week, we would have a chance of having this money be there over the summer to continue the assistance to local governments for mosquito control, to continue the research and development of a vaccine, and to help with the medical counseling that is going on and is necessary not just in Florida, not just in Puerto Rico, but Zika is now in more than 30 States in the Union. I wanted to talk about that one thing, which is, in fact, an emergency. Central Everglades Planning Project Mr. President, I want to tell you about another emergency, and I want everyone to see these photographs. This blue-green algae is surrounding these docks. You can see how it has collected. The brown that you see mixed in with the blue and green is rotting algae. This photo shows a wave coming up on shore in Stuart, FL. This is the St. Lucie River. You can see how much algae is in the river. What is algae? Algae is a plant. It is a plant that is in water. Algae grows like this. Instead of being naturally balanced in the water column, it grows like this when it is fed a lot of fertilizer. Where is that fertilizer coming from? Right now it is coming from the excess nutrient-laden water that is being dumped out of Lake Okeechobee by the Corps of Engineers because the water has gotten too high in Lake Okeechobee, which is a huge lake. This water pressure is now threatening the integrity of the dike around the entire lake where thousands and thousands of people live. In order to relieve that pressure immediately, the Corps of Engineers has opened the floodgates. It has allowed that nutrient-rich water to flow out to the east into the St. Lucie River, which eventually empties into the Atlantic in Stuart, FL, and to the west of Lake Okeechobee and into the Caloosahatchee River, which goes out into Fort Myers. This is obviously a sick river. What happens when you get too many nutrients in the water? It causes the algae to grow. In order for the algae to grow--it is a plant--it sucks up the oxygen in the water and nothing can live. The fish can't breathe, and it becomes a dead river. That is a dead river. Not only is it dead, but all of the algae has floated to the surface, and now it has all of that brown rot. Can you imagine what that smells like? Well, as a Florida boy, to me it smells like rotting algae. If you have any kind of a respiratory situation or if you have allergies, go over there and take a deep breath on that dock and all of a sudden you will be coughing, wheezing, and sneezing. There are a lot of environmental medical health effects as well. What do we need to do? Well, here again, I have written to the two leaders as to what we should do, and I have written to the President about what we ought to do. Ultimately, you don't solve a problem like this until you get a reversal of over three-quarters of a century of diking and draining, and that is called the Everglades Restoration Plan. It has been going on for 20 years, and it is going to go on for another 20 years, but in the meantime, especially when we have emergencies like this, we need to tinker around with that plan. First of all, we need to get to the Water Resources Development Act, or WRDA, that we thought was going to come up in July and has the bipartisan support of the leaders on the environmental committee, Senator Inhofe and Senator Boxer. It is ready to go. We need to get it on the floor and pass it. The WRDA bill has the Corps of Engineers authorized plan to continue the Everglades restoration with what is called the Central Everglades Planning Project, which includes four or five projects over a number of years, so you don't have to dump the water to the east and west out of Lake Okeechobee and create situations like this. There is something else that we can do. We can hold as much water as possible north of the lake in the Kissimmee River basin during the time of the rains that are going to fill up Lake Okeechobee anyway; don't allow the water to go south into the lake. There is something else that the Corps of Engineers can do. They can send more water south by raising the level of the canals to the south just as they did a few months ago during an emergency. This is obviously an emergency, and they need to do that. There is one more thing that can be done. A couple of years ago, the people of Florida voted to amend the Florida constitution to provide for a dedicated source of funding that is already there--it is real estate taxes--and use that money for the acquisition of endangered lands and lands that are needed to preserve the environment. Thus, there is a ready source of funding for the State of Florida if they would appropriate the money to start purchasing lands south of the lake that would become storage areas in a flow way going south and cleansing areas as the water moves south into the river of grass otherwise known as the Florida Everglades. There are many things that have to be done all together, but what we could do here right now--before we adjourn next week--is bring up the WRDA bill. It is ready to go. It is bipartisan, and it will also include the projects that will start the process of alleviating this problem so that no river in America would have to experience what the St. Lucie River and the Caloosahatchee on the west side of Florida are experiencing now. Lord knows that I hope we can suddenly have a miracle around here and get this bipartisan legislation up and moving. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. NELSON

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, we have just a short time before the vote. The President made a request for emergency funding in the amount of $1.9 billion 4 months ago. This is a time when the Nation has an emergency. It doesn't matter if it is an earthquake, a flood, a wildfire, a hurricane, or a volcano, we have always stepped forward. If you don't believe this Zika crisis is an emergency, well, just wait. The tale tell signs are coming. We already have 50 confirmed cases of Zika in the United States. There are 2,600 Americans who are infected with the virus, and that includes 500 pregnant women. Obviously, the southern States, such as my State of Florida, are affected much more than other States. Just yesterday there were three new cases of the virus reported in Florida, which brings the State's total to 223, including 40 pregnant women. These numbers are only going to increase. Four months after the request for emergency funding, the House--in the dark of night, with no opportunity to have a debate--passed a bill to deal with this virus, and as you have heard from many, it is not serious. Instead, it is another attempt to use an emergency must-pass bill to try to further extremist political agendas. It cuts money for Puerto Rico at a time that Puerto Rico can hardly stand on its own financially, and it cuts money for family planning. The CDC has confirmed that Zika can be sexually transmitted. What did I say? They cut money for family planning, and there are over 480 pregnant women in the United States who are presently being monitored for signs of the infection. As we look for ways to prevent the spread of this sexually transmitted disease, the fact that this bill limits access to contraceptives that could help curb the spread of the virus is exactly the reverse of what makes sense. Why can't we grow up and get to the point that we don't have to play partisan politics? This is a real threat, and it is a serious threat. The CDC has confirmed that Zika does, in fact, cause birth defects. There have been four babies born with microcephalus in the country, and two of them died shortly after birth. We have seen the pictures, and we know how horrific and how tragic it is for the families involved. So we need to stop playing these political games. It is time to treat this as a real emergency, and it is time to pass the appropriations bill without all of this political agenda added to it. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, may I be recognized for 2 minutes?

Mr. NELSON. Say again.

Mr. NELSON. Well, I ask unanimous consent to speak for 2 minutes, until the vote at 11 clock, in order to bring the Senate up to date on what has happened to the community of Orlando.

Mr. NELSON. I can certainly--I didn't see anybody on the floor, and that is why----

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, do I understand that we are in the parliamentary procedure where the vote has already been called for at 11 o'clock?

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, I can speak later in the day.

Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, it was my understanding that the Senator from Hawaii was to speak next. I ask through the Chair if the Senator from South Dakota will let me go on and make a comment.