Cornyn Urges Senate Democrats to Drop Filibuster of Zika Bill

Tuesday on the Senate floor I pressed Senate Democrats to stop blocking bipartisan, compromise legislation that would fund efforts to protect Americans from the Zika virus. Excerpts of my remarks are below, and video of the speech can be found here.

There's been a lot of discussion about the Zika virus. As we have come to learn, this is a virus carried by a certain species of mosquito. And because of the summer weather and because the Zika virus seems to be coming our way from Central and South America, we figured it was important for us to do something about it.

Recently I was in Houston, Texas with some of my friends from the Harris County Public Health District, and they were demonstrating to me how they trap mosquitoes.

There is some really fantastic work being done at the local level by our public health districts to monitor the mosquito population, then to test it to see whether they can detect the presence of the Zika virus.

I'm grateful that we have leaders at the local and state level who step up when the federal government seems incapable of doing so. But now it's time for the federal government to step up. Why our Democratic colleagues would risk this horrific birth defect for political reasons is just lost on me. It makes no sense whatsoever.

But for the health of our country and for the protection of all our children, let's get this compromise legislation done. No one should doubt the gravity of the threat or the long-term health consequences of failing to get our work done. So I hope that our Democratic colleagues put their words into action and vote to send additional resources to those communities across the country that are already working hard to defeat the Zika virus.

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