Bill Lee

I was disappointed to learn that half of the available $949,000,000 in the preventive... would be used for the Affordable Care Act, that half of that has been cut.

It seems to me that the dollar amount that the President is requesting is not enough, quite frankly.

I want to support and make sure all of the President's initiatives are fully funded.

Your response in terms of the sequester really is very scary because we are talking about what we need to do in the future.

Any program that sees a reduction means it is less that we can do for the communities in America.

Funding now is about a fifth lower than 2002.

I am so pleased to see in the President's initiative funding to train mental health professionals.

There are young people who die every day on the streets of our cities who are disproportionately, in many cases, people of color because of the everyday violence that we experience.

But what you would see, though, with young men of color, this becomes a pipeline from the cradle to the prison because majority of them never come back to school, and they end up in behavior that sends them into juvenile hall and then into…

Young African-American and Latino boys, they are being suspended and kicked out of school for a variety of reasons.

It is extremely important that we know that we have to have trained mental health counselors.

I am a trained clinical social worker by profession. My background is mental health.

I hope to discuss how to make our schools a safer learning environment without turning them into armed camps.

I hope that we are able to discuss what can be done to reach more children with undiagnosed and untreated mental health challenges.

There is an overwhelming need now. It is the resources that, inexcusably, are lacking.

When we fail to address mental illness, when people cannot access services and there is nowhere for them to go, the outcomes are not positive.

The vast majority of people living with mental illness are not violent and also that the vast majority of violence is not caused by people with mental illness.

The recent mass shootings, including those in Connecticut, Colorado, and Arizona, have launched a real national discussion about mental health issues, especially as they affect our youth.

The digital divide is still very real in many parts of the country in many of our communities

I am really worried about what is taking place.

I just hate to see and to hear all of the, I say, assaults that you are under and attacks.

I would like to find out the status of that and can you give us an update?

I think it is a really important issue that I am going to stay on until no one is being mistreated.

These laws have been on the books since the 1980's and most of them need to be modernized to reflect current scientific advances in AIDS research.

I think it is called the REACH program, which really aims to eliminate racial and ethnic disparities in health.