Darren Soto

I truly appreciate the great sacrifice our veterans have given on behalf of the United States, and I take great pride in serving the needs of veterans in my community.

VA facilities around the country like the one we have in Monroe County should not have to struggle with understaffing issues so they can provide the full set of comprehensive health care services our veterans have earned and depend on.

I want to end where I began, which is this is a key way to help so many of our veterans in a real simple way.

Thank you, Chairman. Thank you so much for hosting this critical hearing.

I also want to just make a point that the temporary protected status program is the current law of the land. The program was created for this exact purpose, to help people living under dire conditions, like Venezuelans who fear for their…

We are here today--like with our press conference yesterday we are here to act on climate and get to 100 percent clean energy by 2050.

As technology increases in vehicles, we in Congress have to keep up with those changes.

I am really proud to be part of a lot of these bills to help increase vehicle safety.

And as we go into the budget, the protections that we couldn't get in recent bills, we will double down on to make sure we have them going into the appropriations process.

I thank the gentleman for his leadership as our chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, and that is why we are here tonight, for those injustices. I am proud to be joined by my good friend, Congressman Jimmy Gomez, of Southern…

Sure. No speaking to the kids there; no photos. And then we were given kind of a song and dance about how well everybody was treated. These young people hailed from Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador, countries that we hear over and over…

The cost of not believing in climate change is just too high.

We are going to do our best to end this crisis for good in Puerto Rico with regard to Medicaid.

I am proud to have introduced, along with Congresswoman Velazquez and the rest of the Puerto Rican task force, a new Medicaid parity bill for Puerto Rico.

We apologize that you all have to go through this over and over again, when there should be a permanent fix.

We know that Puerto Ricans, the 3.3 million on the island, are experiencing a Medicaid crisis.

There is something rotten in the city of Washington. There is an injustice brewing in this Capitol. And there is a sinister plot afoot in this Congress. On the one hand, we have the people's House, the House of Representatives, where we…

We need to boost that up.

It is time to end this injustice.

We would like territories to be treated as states and get the same type of treatment that they would get otherwise.

I trust that today's testimonies will help my colleagues understand the urgent need for action.

I have introduced H.R. 2306, the Puerto Rico Medicaid Act, which seeks to strengthen the Medicaid program on the Island.

In Puerto Rico, under the current Medicaid system, we have seen over 6,000 doctors leave the island...

In fact, we probably need several ways, but it is certainly one of the most logical ways given, to your point earlier, that it hasn't been touched since 1993.

Yes, I think electric vehicles are a key part of how we bend that curve, coupled with investments in transit, strong fuel economy standards.