Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act of 2015

Floor Speech

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Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cruz) and the Senator from Florida (Mr. Rubio).

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Mr. CORNYN. If every Senator could come to the floor and cherry-pick different nominations from the calendar and ask consent that we move to executive session and then consider those, it would result in some chaos.

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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I thank my friend, the senior Senator from Arizona, for his great work over the years, and particularly now in the Committee on Armed Services, which he chairs. He has been tenacious in his attempt to make sure that no dollars are inadvertently or unknowingly wasted, especially when it comes to the Pentagon.

I, for one, believe this is the No. 1 priority of our country. I know he shares that view. But it is pretty hard to make the argument that we ought to continue to give more money to the Pentagon if the money is not being used efficiently, either because of their internal administrative problems or for some other reason.

I know, because I happened to be at the Pentagon this morning, that many of our military chiefs are concerned that the things that are being put in appropriations bills are not things they actually want or need and that there are other priorities. The best way to get those vetted is through the Senate Committee on Armed Services and working with the Appropriations Committee to make sure the money is being used as efficiently as possible and not wasted--certainly not on things the military doesn't want or doesn't need.

So I thank my colleague for his continued leadership.

Mr. President, I wanted to talk about a few topics here. No. 1 is the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act, the legislation we have been working on now for 2 weeks. Anybody who has been listening understands the importance of this legislation, which will help stem the tide of the massive epidemic of opioid prescription drug abuse and heroin abuse that continues to claim lives across our country.

This bill is actually a good example of how the Senate can work in a bipartisan fashion to advance good policies that positively impact the lives of ordinary American citizens. I know most people in this polarized environment are not aware of this bipartisan work we have been able to do over this year and last year, but we have actually done a number of good things. Some, if you told them, they might not even believe it, but to the people who are open to the facts, I think this is another good example. Of course, in this instance, it has been the result of the strong leadership of the junior Senator from New Hampshire, Ms. Ayotte; Senator Portman of Ohio; the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, the senior Senator from Iowa, Mr. Chuck Grassley; along with our Democratic counterparts, people like Senator Whitehouse.

I am hopeful this legislation will contain an amendment I offered last week to help those who struggle with both substance abuse and mental illness. It is estimated that more than 10 million Americans suffer from both addiction and mental health disorders. These are called co-occurring disorders. It is a fact that many people who don't otherwise get treatment for their mental health problems try to self- medicate, making their lives even more complicated and worse, and that is what this amendment is designed to address.

Many mental health and substance abuse services, like specialty courts, have operated on separate tracks, and they only treat one part of the problem. This amendment really isn't all that earth-shaking. All it would do is make the commonsense link between mental health and substance abuse, something that we direct our existing criminal justice programs to apply to these coexisting disorders as well. That way people who struggle with both addiction and mental health problems can have both of those problems addressed using the money we are already appropriating and already spending in grants to local law enforcement and medical providers.

It would also expand substance abuse and transitional services to help those suffering from co-occurring disorders to receive the treatment they need to recover. So I look forward to voting on this legislation and getting it passed soon.

I would note that we are having a few bumps along the way, in terms of our Democratic friends allowing votes on amendments. There are apparently about 25 different amendments that have been negotiated between the Republicans and Democrats, but I am told our Democratic friends are objecting to any amendments by Senators who happen to be running for election in 2016.

Now, the Democratic leader, in a fit of candor the other day, said they were going to object to an amendment authored by the Senator from Wisconsin, Mr. Johnson, because he is running for election. Well, I would ask them to back off of that sort of political hardball and to let us get our work done.

It doesn't help when they object to noncontroversial amendments or they take certain amendments hostage because they do not want somebody to score points by getting something done. I mean that is why we are sent here; it is to get things done for our constituents.

Regarding the amendment I mentioned just a moment ago, that apparently is one of those being held hostage. I would like to share a letter from the National Alliance on Mental Illness, the American Correctional Association, and the National Association of Police Organizations that supports the amendment I just talked about. If the Democratic leadership will not listen to me, maybe they will listen to them. I hope they will listen to the voices of the families who suffer from mental illness and to law enforcement officials.

Hon. John Cornyn, Hart Senate Office Building, Washington, DC.

Dear Senator Cornyn, On behalf of the undersigned mental health, substance abuse and criminal justice organizations, we are writing to express our support of the Mental Health and Substance Abuse Act amendments to S. 524, the Comprehensive Addictions and Recovery Act (CARA).

Approximately 65% of persons incarcerated in jails and prisons across the United States have substance use disorders. Many of these individuals have co-occurring mental illnesses such as depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, or schizophrenia.

It is further estimated that 2 million people with serious mental illness are admitted to jails across the U.S. each year. Twenty percent of all inmates in state and federal prisons, approximately 314,000 individuals, have serious mental illness. Many of these individuals also have drug or alcohol use problems.

Historically, mental health and substance abuse services have been operated separately, and coordination in addressing the needs of people with co-occurring mental illness and substance use disorders has proven challenging. This has been true as well with specialty courts established to address the unique needs of non-violent offenders with substance use disorders (drug courts) or mental illness (mental health courts). Drug courts have frequently not been equipped to address the needs of people with mental illness and mental health courts have frequently not been equipped to address the needs of people with substance use disorders.

The provisions included in the Mental Health and Substance Abuse Amendments would be helpful in addressing these problems.

Section 802 would add ``mental health treatment and transitional services for those with mental illnesses or with co-occurring disorders'' among those prioritized for assistance when transitioning out of criminal justice systems.

Section 803 would include ``training for drug court personnel . . . on identifying and addressing co-occurring substance abuse and mental health problems'' to federal criminal justice training priorities.

Section 804 would add grants for developing and implementing specialized residential substance abuse treatment programs that ``provide appropriate treatment to inmates with co-occurring mental health and substance abuse disorders or challenges.''

Inclusion of these provisions in CARA would be very helpful in fostering positive treatment outcomes and in reducing recidivism among offenders with mental illness and substance use disorders.

Senator Cornyn, we greatly appreciate your strong leadership on these issues and stand ready to help in any way we can to move them forward.

Please contact Ron Honberg with NAMI with any questions or if we can provide further support. Sincerely,

National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), American Correctional Association, National Association of Police Organizations, TASC, Inc. (Treatment Alternatives for Safe Communities--Illinois), The National Alliance to Advance Adolescent Health, American Orthopsychiatric Association. Calling For Appointment of a Special Counsel

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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, separately, earlier this morning I joined my colleagues on the Senate Judiciary Committee to hear testimony from the Attorney General of the United States, Loretta Lynch.

As a former attorney general of my State, I have always taken a great interest in our system of justice at the State level and now certainly at the national level, and I have tried to do everything I can to help strengthen the rule of law and help keep the American people safe, and that includes transparent and fair investigations.

I spent a little bit of time asking the Attorney General this morning about her Department's investigation into the former Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, and her use of a private email server during her tenure. I have talked many times on the floor about my concerns surrounding her use of an unsecured email server. The former Secretary did refuse to use the government server and decided to basically play by her own rules, setting up a server at her home in New York. But the fact is, this sort of reckless conduct put our country at great risk. Several experts from the intelligence community have outlined how her unsecured server left her emails--some highly classified--vulnerable to hacking in cyber attacks. So this is a very serious matter.

Last fall, about 6 months ago, I asked the Attorney General to appoint a special counsel to fairly and fully conduct an investigation. That is because Secretary Clinton is not just a random citizen or former government employee; her case is awfully high-profile. As a result, I think there are many questioning whether she is being treated in exactly the same way as any other citizen would be treated under similar circumstances or whether she is getting some sort of preferential treatment. Because the Attorney General is a political appointee of the President of the United States and given Ms. Clinton's high profile, there are real conflicts of interest and real concerns about politics ahead of justice. Those could be addressed and mitigated by providing a special counsel, as the law provides, to provide some measure of independence from the Attorney General so the public can have confidence that this case is being treated just like every other case and not with some sort of political favoritism based on a conflict of interest.

This morning, I questioned the Attorney General about recent reports that the Department has granted immunity to the staffer who set up Secretary Clinton's private server.

So anybody listening understands, the only reason immunity would be granted in a criminal investigation is if somebody invokes their Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination. But if given immunity, then that individual must cooperate with law enforcement authorities and cannot refuse to answer questions because they no longer have any likelihood or any chance of being convicted of that crime, having been granted immunity.

This does indicate that this investigation has taken on a new level of seriousness, and I suspect the FBI continues to be hard at work trying to get to the bottom of this, as I would expect them to do. I hope this indicates that the Department of Justice is treating this case with the great care and gravity it requires. They are integral to this grant of immunity because the FBI can't do this on their own, and it takes the prosecutors of the Department of Justice to agree to a grant of immunity as part of an investigation.

I still believe the American people deserve an independent investigation, and I will continue to press for the appointment of a special counsel to that end. Mental Health Reform Legislation

Finally, Mr. President, I want to address another issue I questioned the Attorney General about, and that is about needed reforms to our mental health system. I believe I repeated to her today--I have repeated this story so many times, I sometimes forget when I have said it before. But I recently had a chance to meet with a number of major county sheriffs, and somebody asked me: Would you like to meet the largest mental health provider in America?

I said: Well, sure.

He said: Well, he is over here. It is the sheriff of Los Angeles County.

So the fact is, many people incarcerated in our jails are suffering from mental illness, and they may have committed petty crimes, such as trespassing and the like, but they are not getting their condition treated as long as they are warehoused in jails. Many communities, such as my hometown of San Antonio, TX, have created a model of how to divert people from jail to get their mental health issues treated and at the same time make sure we don't continue this turnstile of people coming in and out of our jails when their underlying mental illness problems are not being treated.

I asked her to take a look at a bill I introduced, the Mental Health and Safe Communities Act, which is designed to help communities and families who are struggling to help their loved ones who are mentally ill. Many families don't have access to adequate treatment or lack the resources to comply with doctors' orders.

The fact is, back in the nineties, back when a major policy change was made in America and people were essentially turned out of institutions where the mentally ill were treated, there wasn't any followup to make sure there was some sort of safety net or some follow- on treatment to make sure their needs were taken care of.

Today, any of us who have walked down the street in a major American city know we have a lot of homeless people living on our streets who are essentially suffering from some form or another of mental illness, and their needs are not being addressed. Some of them, perhaps because they abused alcohol or other drugs in order to try to medicate or take care of their problems on their own, end up committing crimes of one type or another, not necessarily what I would call a serious crime but serious enough to get them arrested and put in jail.

I am hopeful that we will take this opportunity, as we are looking at our criminal justice system at large, along with prison reform and legislation that passed out of the Senate Judiciary Committee--which I hope will soon come to the floor of the Senate--to deal with issues like this confluence of mental health and criminal justice in a way that is more enlightened, in a way that is cheaper, and in a way that is more humane and more efficient than simply warehousing people who are mentally ill in our criminal justice system.

We can do better, and I am hopeful that models like those in Bexar County, TX, where mentally ill persons are able to find programs that actually help them solve their underlying problem--those kinds of models are helpful to the rest of the country and to us as we try to craft means for our communities to better care for those suffering from mental illness.

I look forward to moving this legislation soon. The chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, Senator Alexander, tells me he has been working with Senator Murray, his ranking member, along with Senator Cassidy and Senator Murphy, on another piece of legislation that they are proposing on mental health. My hope is that the group of us who are interested in this issue can cobble together a consensus piece of legislation which the majority leader could then bring to the floor of the Senate to let us do some additional important bipartisan work to help address this problem.

I don't see any Senator wishing to speak, so I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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