Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act of 2015

Floor Speech

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Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I come to the floor this morning because of the important subject that is before us, the bill that deals with the opioid epidemic, the follow-on heroin problem, a bill that was reported out of committee unanimously, a very important piece of legislation. Right now we have unfortunate political gamesmanship that has overtaken some of my Democratic colleagues at the very same time that everybody on the Judiciary Committee knows we need to pass the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act that goes by the acronym CARA for short.

It happens, though, that the opioid epidemic is not a political game. It is a real problem out there. A massive hearing we had in committee demonstrates that. I am very proud the Senate has taken up the CARA bill, after this public health crisis festered for so long while the Senate was controlled by the Democrats.

For example, tragically heroin overdose deaths more than tripled from 2010 to 2014. All the while, the Democratic leadership simply did not make it a priority to move a bill like CARA. It is 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 is a bipartisan bill, as I said, it passed out of our committee--and you can't say so often--unanimously. Everybody at the grassroots level 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. Just a few weeks after it came out of committee, here we are working on it with an 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. This is very much unlike the way the Senate acted when the Democrats controlled it. This issue was not brought up. For political reasons, that is not a narrative some Democrats want the American people to hear, and so we are 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 is what we have Appropriations Committees for. That is why we have an appropriations process. Through the appropriations process, we can evaluate competing priories, evaluate tradeoffs, and in the end ensure that adequate resources are directed to this epidemic while at the same time maintaining fiscal discipline.

I am glad 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 up 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 addition and heroin problem--also a problem in the eastern part of my State--but somehow the Democrats would not agree.

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 room, right off the floor of this Senate, as we do quite regularly, particularly when we have so much business here.

That was a routine accommodation I asked them to make, similar to the accommodation 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 Senate. So I accommodated them. Would they give me the accommodation of holding this meeting off the floor of the Senate so we could take up the business of voting out some judges? There was not any legislation on our agenda, but we could have voted out some judges. How often do we hear that the Judiciary Committee is not moving judges? We had a chance to do that probably in a 10-minute meeting right in the President's Room, just a few feet from where I am standing right now.

I gave them an accommodation, but now I am running into trouble because I canceled a meeting because we have this important bill on the floor of the Senate. I understand they are protesting the Judiciary Committee's lack of action on a Supreme Court nomination, which nomination we could not even possibly consider if the President does not send it up.

I imagine this is just the first of several problems we are going to have in the next few weeks. While they do that this morning, I want you to know I am going to be on the Senate floor trying to get this very important opioid addiction bill--heroin addiction bill--passed, and I will be thinking about so many people CARA will help once this bill is signed by the President.

At our Judiciary Committee hearing 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 lives after an overdose.

At that hearing, we also heard from Tonda DaRae, a courageous Ohio woman who lost a daughter to an overdose and who 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 communities of recovery.

I will be thinking about the many Iowans I have heard about who have been impacted by 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 is Carla Richards, of Waukee, IA, who lost her daughter Anna to an overdose as well. She founded an organization to promote awareness called Anna's Warriors. There are 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 is waiting to be spent to overcome the opioid addiction.

There is a seed of hope in many of them, hope that we can act to address this epidemic, each in our own way. I will 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, on the floor of the Senate, at a time when people are dying--44,000 people in the most recent statistical year, more than automobile accidents and gun crimes together. This is a real problem. We need to get this bill passed, and we are working on accommodating amendments and moving it forward. It is not the time for the go-slow approach we are seeing already on the floor of the Senate.

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Mr. GRASSLEY. I would ask the Senator from Vermont a question, if he would take it.

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Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I heard what they said about the meeting being canceled today, because we could have held the meeting off the floor and voted out three judges. So somehow that interfered with what they wanted to do in the Judiciary Committee meeting. I asked for an accommodation. I asked the ranking member for the same accommodation I gave his side when we canceled a hearing on the EB-5 Program earlier this week. And a hearing obviously doesn't take the same time away from the floor as a markup might. So consequently I am asking the ranking member if that accommodation isn't worth the accommodation that I asked today.

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Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, we have had quite a discussion this morning on why the Judiciary Committee didn't meet.

We were prepared to meet the same way we often meet when there is just maybe 5 minutes of business. We meet off the Senate floor so that we can do both the work of the entire Senate and the work of the Judiciary committee. That happens often. And that's the accommodation I asked for from the minority. But they objected. Of course, they asked me to accommodate them on a hearing that I had scheduled for earlier this week on the EB 5 immigration issue. I postponed that hearing because minority members of the Judiciary Committee didn't want to have that hearing when this very important opioid addiction bill was on the floor. The heroin addiction bill is before the United States Senate with 44,000 lives being lost in a year because of that addiction. And we're considering important legislation to solve that problem. I did not get that accommodation, so I canceled the meeting.

So what we heard on the floor here, while my colleagues were holding up the opioid bill, all this talk about having a debate about the next nominee to the Supreme Court--a nominee that hasn't even been made yet.

So I come to the floor now to respond to just a couple ridiculous arguments that my friends made this morning.

First of all, we are going to have a debate about the Supreme Court and the proper role of a Supreme Court Justice in our constitutional system. We are going to debate whether or not the American people want yet another Justice who decides cases based on what is in his or her heart or whether they want a Justice who will decide cases based on the Constitution and the law. That is not my estimation of the debate; that is exactly what this President said regarding previous judges and Justices. He said he was looking for somebody who would have empathy for people who came before the Court. Having empathy for people that come before the Court means that you are supposed to do something different than what judges are supposed to do. Judges are supposed to look at the facts and the law and base their decisions on the law. They aren't supposed to base their decisions on personal feelings. We are a nation based on the rule of law. So this is what the American people have to think about and decide. They need to have a voice in this process. As Senator Biden said in 1992 or as Senator Schumer said in 2007--we are not going to consider a Supreme Court nominee during a heated Presidential election. So we have an opportunity to have a national debate. This whole debate is about whether we are going to have Justices who decide cases based on empathy rather than the letter of the Constitution and the letter of the statute.

On the second point, we have heard a lot of complaining around here-- and I suspect we are going to hear a lot more--because Senate judiciary Republicans met and then made public our decision not to hold hearings on the Supreme Court nomination during a heated Presidential election year. Give me a break.

We made a decision based on history and our intention to protect the ability of the American people to make their voices heard. We didn't play games, just as Senator Biden wasn't playing games when he gave that 20,000-word speech in 1992 where he said that we shouldn't have a lameduck President make a nomination during a Presidential election campaign, just like Senator Schumer said in 2007 before the American Constitution Society, 18 months before George W. Bush was out of office. So that is the historical approach. Very plain and open, both Democrats and Republicans taking the same tone so the people could make their voices heard. The American people should be heard not only on who is going to fill Justice Scalia's seat, but also on the proper role of the Supreme Court and whether or not the Court ought to be a legislative body.

Like I said, we made that decision and immediately made it public. I don't remember being invited to the secret meetings that the Democrats held before they walked onto the Senate floor in November of 2013 and invoked the nuclear option so they could pack the D.C. circuit. We wanted to save taxpayer money. The D.C. circuit is the least worked circuit court in the country. Everyone knew you didn't need three more judges. That court was fairly evenly divided between liberals and conservatives. But because that court reviews the President's Executive orders and regulations, this President wanted to make sure he had enough judges on that court, so that when the court reviews the actions he takes with his pen and phone, he would get favorable rulings. So they packed the D.C. circuit, so that is why we had the nuclear option, because the other side had to get around the 60-vote rule that we had here for the approval of judges.

I also keep hearing this claim Senator Biden, when he was chairman of the committee, should be praised for how he handled the Bork-Kennedy episode. Now, I happened to be here in 1987. I saw what happened to Robert Bork. I saw how he was smeared. And because he was smeared, that seat remained open and was filled in early 1988. If that is the other side's argument, then I think we all know how weak their position is.

Finally, let me say this. I said yesterday and I want to say it again, the other side knows that this nominee isn't going to get confirmed. Everyone knows it. The only reason that they are complaining about a hearing on the nominee is because they want to make the process as political as possible. And that goes to the heart of the matter.

We are not going to politicize this process in the middle of a Presidential election year. We are going to let the people have a voice.
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