Debbie Wasserman Schultz

The United States of America has the finest military in the world and our country's greatest national security asset is the men and women who wear the uniform of the United States. When we do send our men and women into harm's way, we must ensure that our defense and military policies reflect their sacrifice, ensuring that our troops have the resources, support and equipment they need to protect themselves and fulfill their mission. When our troops return home, we must provide them with top notch medical treatment, support for their families and opportunities for education and workforce advancement.

As Ranking Member of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Military Construction and Veterans Affairs, I have had the opportunity to tour military bases around our state, and to hear directly from military leadership about the challenges and needs facing our troops. There is an immediate need to invest in military housing for our servicemembers and their families, and to protect them from neglectful private contractors. 

The Military Construction and Veterans Affairs Subcommittee is the only subcommittee in Congress that makes policy and provides funding for the entire life cycle of an individual’s service, from their time in the military and after they leave the service and join the ranks of veterans. I am fiercely determined to ensure that our servicemembers get the resources and support they need.

We should use our troops wisely, and deploy them in new regions only as a last resort. Military action that endangers our troops and wreaks havoc on our economy must be initiated only after all diplomatic options have been exhausted, when it serves a compelling national interest or is used to defend one of our allies, and when there is a clear plan for success, including an exit strategy.

Another critical part of enhancing our military readiness is ensuring that we have the best and brightest soldiers and translators on our battlefields and in our command centers, which is why I supported and voted for the repeal of the military’s discriminatory ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ military policy, and consistently opposed President Trump’s transphobic ban on transgender Americans serving in the U.S. military. This ban not only violates our nation’s core values of equal protection, but it is ultimately counterproductive to our national security.

We must recognize that America’s strength and influence abroad begins with the steps we take at home. We must grow our economy and put Americans back to work. We must educate our children, ensuring they are able to compete in a time when knowledge is capital and the marketplace is global. We must pursue a strategy of national renewal with American innovation as the foundation of American power.

The national wealth gap is rising, and it is particularly pronounced for people of color. The income gap between the top 1 percent and bottom 99 percent of wage earners in Florida is one of the worst divides in the nation. There is also a persistent gender pay gap that threatens women’s economic security – on average, women are paid 80 cents for every dollar paid to a man, and this disparity is even greater for women of color. The federal minimum wage has not increased since 2009, and it certainly has not kept pace with inflation. This creates economic uncertainty for many hardworking Americans, even when the economy appears to be booming.

Implementing the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in 2009 created a vital and significant foundation for the future of a stronger economy. From assistance to homeowners, to investment in infrastructure, to easing credit for small businesses, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act helped put our economy back on track.

But our economy is only as strong as its impact on Americans across the financial spectrum. I have cosponsored legislation to raise the federal minimum wage and tipped minimum wage to 15 dollars by 2020. And I’m fighting against President Trump’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Acts of 2017, which doled out enormous, permanent tax cuts for corporations and billionaires with meager, temporary tax cuts for American families. This bill has already increased our national deficit and saddled our national debt, and the consequences will become worse when the individual tax cuts expire.

We need a fair taxation system that supports a growing economy, small business creation, and American families – while ensuring our federal government has adequate funding to support services and infrastructure that make our country work.  

Education is not only the right of every child; it is the cornerstone of America’s economic future. It is a simple fact that nations who out-educate us now will out-compete us in the future. Now more than ever, we must commit to our national education system by investing in our public K-12 schools. Congress can help drive innovation and provide the robust resources that give every child the opportunity to receive a high-quality education, regardless of their ZIP code.

I am proud to support federal investments like Head Start, as well as a proposed package of robust funding for our youngest students, including a federal-state partnership to help get more students into pre-K classrooms and extend vital early childhood education opportunities to more families. Additionally, Title I funds provide a critical investment that helps even the playing field for schools that serve low-income families.

As a Floridian and a mother of three students who attended Broward County public schools, I understand that we must continue to ensure that our schools have the funding to retain top-notch teachers and provide our children with the resources they need to succeed. Teachers are our best resource for our kids, and they can and must be brought in as partners as we move our nation’s education policy forward. Teachers must be treated as the professionals they are, and with the respect, resources, and compensation they deserve.

I am committed to working with my colleagues in the House and with the President to provide a high-quality education to all of America’s students, creating a nation prepared for the challenges of the 21st century.

While we address climate change and continue our national transition to renewable sources of energy, we must protect our precious coastlines from the threat of offshore oil and gas drilling. Throughout my legislative career, I have consistently led the fight against any expansion of drilling off the coast of Florida. As the explosion at BP’s Deepwater Horizon and the subsequent oil spill have shown us, offshore drilling could easily bring oil slicks to Florida’s coasts, and even penetrate the Florida Everglades, an ecosystem that is still in recovery. Oil spills threaten our state’s vulnerable coastal ecosystems, which are home to some of our most precious and diverse wildlife.  And now more than ever, we need to be pushing for the expansion of clean and renewable energy sources, not taking steps backward to open more areas for fossil fuel development and extraction.

I continue to oppose efforts to expand offshore oil and gas exploration, including proposing a permanent ban on oil and gas drilling around Florida’s coasts, while working to ensure that we can adequately and rapidly respond when spills do inevitably occur.

While conservatives  and special interests assault our bedrock environmental statutes and try to roll back and eliminate dozens of significant, progressive environmental regulations, we simply cannot waver in our fight against climate change and our efforts to safeguard our clean air and water.

In South Florida, we are fortunate to have one of the world’s great wonders in our backyard: the Florida Everglades, our famed River of Grass. Restoring this natural treasure is important not only to protect the water supply for more than 8 million Floridians and to protect biodiversity and endangered species, but also because I believe as a mother that we must leave this world better than we found it.

As a senior member of the Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee, I use my unique position to advocate for South Florida and Everglades restoration, take bold action on climate change and renewable energy, and improve the quality of our air and water.  It is imperative, now more than ever, that we adequately fund ecosystem restoration and clean energy initiatives as Florida deals with the full effects of our global climate crisis.

During my time in Congress, I have helped secure billions to protect our natural wetlands and clean drinking water, and I will always worked side-by-side with my Democrat and Republican colleagues in the Florida delegation to protect Florida’s coasts and combat harmful algal blooms.

Protecting South Florida’s ecosystems, from our internationally renowned beaches to the Everglades, is a fundamental responsibility that I do not take lightly. We must continue to work to make certain we have proper safeguards to protect the environment—using, not ignoring, settled science—to protect our people and our planet.

Big environmental issues like climate change are affecting us here and now.  Our children and grandchildren did not create these problems. We cannot in good conscience leave it up to them to solve on their own.

South Florida has the largest concentration of Venezuelans in the United States, some of whom came to the United States to flee violence and hardship at the hands of the Maduro regime. Members of my community have shared many first-hand stories of brutal repression and the humanitarian crisis taking place in the country. I have used legislative tools to express profound concern and urge immediate reform regarding the ongoing political, economic, social, and humanitarian crisis in Venezuela. I support legislation addressing human rights in Venezuela and U.S. efforts to support the restoration of legitimate democracy in the country.

Our nation’s foreign policy is an important tool to support human rights, civil liberties and free elections, and American strategic interests worldwide. I have continuously fought to protect the human rights and prosperity of our international neighbors and partners, and to promote peace and democracy worldwide.

I have supported legislation to advance global food security, end violence against children, support democratic growth and governance, extend nuclear prevention, and deliver humanitarian and economic aid.

Gun violence is a public health crisis. Floridians, like far too many Americans, have had to deal with the scourge of senseless gun violence time and again. We’ve mourned over Pulse, the shooting at the Ft. Lauderdale Airport, and the tragedy in Parkland. Meanwhile, firearms claim victims nearly every day in communities that too often fail to capture headlines. The epidemic of senseless gun violence must come to an end. No single law can ever prevent all these tragedies, but we need a sustained, collaborative effort to seriously reduce gun violence.

We should start by closing all the background check loopholes that allow dangerous people to evade the law and purchase deadly firearms. I was proud to work with Fred Guttenberg to introduce legislation named in honor of his daughter, Jaime, that would close those same loopholes for illegal purchases of ammunition. It requires more than a gun to take an innocent life; it also takes bullets. We need to do everything we can to keep both out of the wrong hands.

We must also push to get weapons of war off our streets. That means banning the sale of assault weapons and firearms with high capacity magazines.

Finally, we need to give the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention the authority and adequate funding to study the gun violence epidemic as a public health crisis.

Gun tragedies have taken lives on our streets, in our communities, and at our airports, churches, and schools. I have met with many victims’ families and I intend to honor their loved ones with action. I will not be intimidated by the NRA or anyone else who makes the mistake of standing in our way. Protecting the lives of our families, friends, and neighbors is simply too important.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) became law on March 23, 2010. This law was a critical step toward ensuring that all Americans, including millions of Floridians, have access to quality, affordable health care.

Nationwide, data from the CDC shows that well over 20 million previously uninsured Americans have gained health coverage since the ACA became law.

The ACA greatly reduced the rate of uninsured in our state by making health care more affordable for Floridians through health care subsidies and reduced costs. An estimated 1.3 million Floridians qualify for financial assistance to purchase health insurance through the ACA and, according to HHS, 84 percent of Floridians with a marketplace plan could select a plan for $100 or less per month, with 75 percent being able to choose plans under $50 per month. The percentage of uninsured Floridians has dropped from 21% in 2010 to 13% in 2017.

Overall, in 2019, nearly 1.8 million Floridians chose a marketplace plan according to the Kaiser Family Foundation – the highest total of any state in the country, a number that has steadily increased as the ACA expanded access to and affordability of health care for everyday Floridians. In 2018, 94% of Floridians enrolled in the marketplace received advanced premium tax credits.

The ACA is also providing more expansive and affordable coverage for the people who often need it the most which ultimately benefits all of us. Women can no longer be charged higher premiums just for being a woman, Americans with pre-existing conditions can no longer be dropped from insurance plans, and the Medicare Part D "donut hole" is closing, providing immediate relief to South Floridian seniors who were at risk of falling into this coverage gap.

The numbers speak for themselves — there is demand for affordable health care and thanks to the Affordable Care Act, more and more Floridians are finding that they now have access to quality coverage. That is why efforts to repeal or defund the ACA are not productive in working toward quality, more affordable healthcare for all Americans. I am committed to working in a bipartisan fashion to continue making meaningful improvements to our health care system based on facts and real-life impact, not political rhetoric.

For America to prosper, we must strike the appropriate balance regarding budget cuts and making critical investments in our future. Attempting to balance our budget on the backs of students is neither ethical nor the way for America to remain competitive in a global marketplace. If we expect young people to seek out the training they need to succeed, we must do what we can to make sure these opportunities are accessible and affordable, and that our students will enter the job market free of the burden of unreasonable debt.

I will continue to support robust funding for Pell grants and have supported legislation to provide college students with loans at low rates, including supporting legislation that would allow students to refinance their loans at the same low rates available to new borrowers. These student loans are helping make school affordable for students and their families, and they are part of what I hope will be a comprehensive effort from all stakeholders to keep college costs down.

I will also continue to support access to higher education for DREAMers through legislation to prohibit college and university admissions discrimination against undocumented students.

As Congress continues our work on a secure fiscal future for our nation, I will be working to protect funding and accessibility to these critical investments in America’s students. Allowing our students to graduate with a better education and less debt is the best way to ensure that America remains competitive long into the future.

Members of my community represent a diverse background of immigration experiences, and many have experienced prejudice and discrimination due to their immigration status or home country of origin. In a political environment with rising xenophobic rhetoric and policy, I remain committed to fixing our immigration system. This includes providing a pathway to citizenship, fair treatment under the law, and extending protections for DREAMers, Temporary Protected Status holders, and refugees.

There is significant harm to repair in our country when it comes to ensuring that immigrants are treated with dignity, and I am committed to addressing that harm while also proactively advancing immigration reforms that offer new solutions.

I have sponsored and co-sponsored legislation to protect DACA, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, and TPS recipients; prevent information sharing between Department of Homeland Security and Health and Human Services that impedes the sponsorship of unaccompanied migrant youth; protect immigrants from legal exploitation; reunited separated families; provide protections for detained immigrants; and prohibit discrimination in higher education against undocumented students.

I will continue to fight for justice and equality for all immigrants in South Florida.

As the Chair of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Military Construction and Veterans Affairs, I am working every day to secure funding and support for our veterans.

We owe our veterans nothing less than the highest quality health care, delivered in a timely fashion. Unfortunately, there are too many disturbing cases of substandard care at VA nursing homes, and the rate of veteran suicide reveals that the VA’s efforts on mental health are inadequate. I am working to ensure the leadership of Veterans Affairs addresses these key issues for our veterans’ health and wellbeing. I am also deeply opposed to efforts to privatize VA care, and, as Ranking Member of the Subcommittee, continue to hold VA leadership accountable on their stated commitment not to privatize these critical services.

To protect the ability of veterans to access all the benefits they deserve, I support legislation aimed at making it easier for veterans to verify their service and qualify for educational assistance, as well as policies to increase veteran Cost of Living Adjustments and retirement and disability pay. Benefits that allow our veterans to pursue continued education, retire with financial security, and support physical and mental health are sacred and I will continue to fight for them.

Women and men serve with equal commitment in the military, and we need parity when it comes to access and gender-specific care options at the VA. Funding for gender-specific healthcare for women has remained stagnant at around $500 million over the past few years, yet women are the fastest-growing veteran group – they make up about 9 percent of the current veteran population, and are estimated to make up 15 percent by 2035.

More resources need to be invested to increase women veterans’ access to care. Women should be able to walk into any VA facility and receive a basic standard of care. Every single VA facility should be equipped to allow women veterans to receive care from women doctors or access gender-specific care programs for women.

I believe we have a duty to protect and provide for every American who serves, and I pledge to always honor their service, sacrifices and their dedication to our nation.