Floor Remarks by Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa
Chairman, Senate Judiciary Committee
On the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act
Thursday, March 03, 2016
I come to the floor this morning because of the important subject that's before us. The bill that deals with the opioid epidemic and the follow-on heroin problem. A bill that was reported out of committee unanimously. A very important piece of legislation. But right now we have an unfortunate political gamesmanship that has overtaken some of my Democratic colleagues at the very same time that everybody on the Judiciary Committee knows that we need to pass the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act that goes by the acronym, C-A-R-A, CARA, for short.
It happens though that the epidemic is not a political game. It's a real problem out there. A massive hearing that we had in committee demonstrates that. I'm very proud that the Senate has taken the CARA bill up after this public health crisis festered for so long while the Senate was controlled by the Democrats. Tragically, for example, heroin overdose deaths more than tripled from 2010 to 2014. All the while the Democratic leadership simply didn't make it a priority to move a bill like CARA.
It's a bipartisan bill that addresses the public health crisis of heroin and prescription opioid abuse. Through the hard work of many on both sides of the aisle, because it's a bipartisan bill, it passed out of our committee, as I said. And you can't say so often, unanimously, because everybody at the grass roots of America thinks everything here is always partisan between Republicans and Democrats. Not when it comes to the opioid issue or a lot of other issues. This bill came out of committee unanimously, and we ought to get it to the House of Representatives as fast as we can and to the President.
In just a few weeks after it came out of committee, here we are working on it; opportunity to pass it. This reflects the senate working in a very constructive bipartisan way on behalf of the American people and the people who are addicted to heroin and opioids. And this is very much unlike the way the senate acted when the Democrats controlled it. This issue was not brought up but for political reasons. That's not a narrative that some Democrats want the Americans to hear and so we're having this game today.
Yesterday, there was a manufactured controversy over the amount of funding. Of course the opioid crisis demands resources, and significant resources are being directed to it both by the Appropriations Committee and the programs laid out in this bill before us right now. In fact, according to the Office of National Drug Control Policy, the appropriations act passed in December provides more than $400 million in funding specifically to address the opioid epidemic. This is an increase of more than $100 million over the previous year. None of that money has been spent yet. All of that money is still available today.
This bill authorizes so many activities to combat the crisis. But it was never intended to appropriate funding. That's what we have Appropriation Committees for. That's why we have an appropriation process. Through the appropriation process, we can evaluate competing priorities and evaluate trade-offs, and in the end, ensure that adequate resources are directed to this epidemic while at the same time maintaining fiscal discipline. So I’m glad that the senate rejected that attempt to inject gamesmanship into the debate over ways to improve this bill. That vote happened yesterday.
Now the minority in the Senate, the Democrats, are setting up additional procedural roadblocks. We tried to set in additional votes this morning to move this very important bill along so we can help the people of the various states, and particularly New England, solve this opioid addiction and heroin problem, also a problem in the eastern part of my state. But somehow the Democrats wouldn't agree.
And because we have this bill on the floor, I also asked the Democrats on the committee to hold our weekly Judiciary Committee business meeting over here in the Capitol building instead of in the committee meeting room. Right off the floor of this Senate, as we do quite regularly, particularly when we have so much business here. So that was a routine accommodation that I asked them to make, similar to the accommodation that I gave to them when we had a hearing scheduled earlier this week on the EB-5 immigration bill when they asked to cancel that because this bill was on the floor of the United States Senate.
So I accommodated them. Would they give me the accommodation of holding this meeting off the floor of the United States Senate so we could take up the business of voting out some judges? There wasn't any legislation on our agenda, but we could have voted out some judges. But how often do we hear that the Judiciary Committee is not moving judges. We had a chance to do that probably in a ten-minute meeting right in the President's Room, just a few feet off where I’m standing right now. I gave them accommodations, but now I’m running into trouble because I canceled a meeting. Because we’ve got this important bill on the floor of the United States Senate.
I understand that they're protesting the Judiciary Committee's lack of action on a Supreme Court nomination, a nomination we couldn't even possibly consider if the President doesn't send it up. So I imagine that this is just the first of several problems that we're going to have in the next few weeks.
While they do that this morning, I want you to know that I’m going to be here on the Senate floor trying to get this very important opioid addiction bill, heroin addiction bill passed. And I’ll be thinking about so many people that CARA will help once this bill is signed by the President.
At our Judiciary Committee hearing that we had on this very important problem, we heard from Nick Willard, Chief of the Manchester, New Hampshire, Police Department. His officers will benefit from the training the bill authorizes to use Naloxone, a drug that can save life after an overdose.
At that hearing we also heard from Tonda DaRae, a courageous Ohio woman who lost a daughter to the overdose and founded a support group for those in recovery called Holly's Song of Hope. Her group may profit from this legislation's grants aimed at building community of recovery.
And I’ll be thinking about the many Iowans that I’ve heard about who have been impacted about this crisis. I spoke earlier this week about Kim Brown of Davenport who lost her son Andy to an overdose. She now speaks out across the state about the epidemic. There's Carla Richards of Waukee, Iowa, who lost her daughter Anna to an overdose as well. She founded an organization to promote awareness called Anna’s warriors.
There's all kinds of tragic stories that every senator in this body could talk about that highlight the rationale behind this legislation and the $400 million that's waiting to be spent to overcome the opioid addiction epidemic. And there's a seed of hope in many of them, hope that we can act to address this epidemic each in our own way. I'll be thinking of these stories today as we try to move CARA one step closer to becoming law. So why would a bill that got out of committee unanimously have this sort of shenanigans going on the floor of the United States Senate at a time when people are dying – 44,000 people in recent statistical year, more than automobile accidents and gun crimes together add up to? This is a real problem. We need to get this bill passed, and we're working on accommodating amendments and moving it forward. It's not the time for the slow approach that we're seeing already on the floor of the United States Senate.
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