Mr. CICILLINE. Mr. Chairman, I'm new to this body but I was just elected to the Congress of the United States and what I heard during the course of my campaign is the urgency to get people back to work, to strengthen the middle class, to create jobs and to deal with the deficit. We've just spent the last 3 hours under the cloak of deficit reduction. My friends on the other side of the aisle have pushed this very extreme amendment, which is targeting women's health care and women's health care providers. This ideological attack comes at the expense of our Nation's women. It's an attack on health centers and will put the lives of millions of women at risk--millions of women who seek and receive health care at Planned Parenthood centers all around this country.

Every year, Planned Parenthood doctors and nurses carry out nearly 1 million lifesaving screenings for cervical cancer and 830,000 breast exams. Its health centers provide contraception to nearly 2.5 million patients, and nearly 4 million patients are treated for sexually transmitted infections, including HIV.

[Time: 23:40] Planned Parenthood provides preventative health care, and that represents 90 percent of its work. We already have a Federal prohibition of using Federal funds for abortion. Not a single penny intended or targeted by this amendment is used to terminate a pregnancy.

What we should be talking about is getting the American people back to work: creating jobs, responsibly dealing with our deficit, and doing everything we can to strengthen the middle class. That's what we were sent here to do. That's what we should be doing.

I urge my colleagues to reject this amendment so that we can get back to the important business of putting Americans back to work. [Page: H1173] I yield to the gentlewoman from California.