WASHINGTON– Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) co-chairs Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.) and Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) joined CPC member Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) to condemn the House GOP’s decision to make H.R.7, a divisive assault on women’s health care choices, their first significant legislative action of 2014. Reps. Grijalva, Ellison and Holmes Norton issued the following statement as the House prepared to vote on H.R. 7:
"Our country faces big economic problems that need serious congressional attention. This bill is the furthest thing from the American people's needs, wants or interests, and I think the majority knows it. If this is the tone they want to set for 2014, that's their prerogative, but my progressive colleagues and I are going to keep working to create jobs. I think that's what the American public wants Congress to do, and I think they're right," said Rep. Grijalva.
“Republicans are determined to restrict women’s health care options and send us back forty years to when women were denied the right to make decisions about their own health. H.R. 7 puts House Republicans directly between women and their doctors. I will always oppose any bill that limits a woman’s right to make her own private health care decisions,” said Rep. Ellison.
“Republican serial attempts to usurp a local jurisdiction’s authority by intentionally violating women’s constitutional rights to reproductive freedom is an affront not only to our low income women but a direct violation of our local government’s home rule,” saidCongresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton. “The District of Columbia is a local jurisdiction of free American citizens, not a colony of the Congress. This bill mocks our American democracy and violates the majority’s own stated principles of local control and devolving power to states and localities.”
If passed, H.R. 7 would place new restrictions on how women obtain and use private insurance, and questions have been raised regarding the new role this would create for the I.R.S.
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