Elizabeth Furse: “tomorrow I am introducing a very important piece of legislation, and I am joined by 14 of my Democratic women…”

“tomorrow I am introducing a very important piece of legislation, and I am joined by 14 of my Democratic women colleagues. This legislation is called the Children's National Security Act, and I want to spend a few minutes this evening telling my colleagues about it. I am sure we all remember the phrase, women and children first. Well, sometimes I think that we have forgotten that phrase and we think only of children last. I just got a recent report of the state of America, and our priorities and children do not do very well in that. We are first in military technology, we are first in defense expenditures, but we were 18th in infant mortality, 17th in low birth weight rates, and we are very last in protecting our children against gun violence. In fact, of the 26 industrialized nations, the deaths of U.S. children account for three out of four from gun violence out of all 27 nations. So my bill is a conglomeration of lots of very good pieces of legislation. It is about priorities and funding what is really important to our Nation's families.”