Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act of 2016--Conference Report

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, first, let me thank my colleague from Illinois for his remarks on the funding issue. I couldn't agree more.

There is no question that this body should be working to help curb opioid abuse in this country, to improve mental health services, to improve the way we treat addiction and speed up recovery. Everyone in this Chamber knows it. But the bill before us, the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act, is woefully insufficient for dealing with the opioid and heroin crisis. It makes a whole lot of changes, but it doesn't support a single one with new resources.

It would authorize block grants to States to treat people who are hooked on these dangerously addictive prescription painkillers, but it doesn't provide any actual money to give. It would authorize programs to help law enforcement crack down on this scourge, but it doesn't provide a single plugged nickel to our cops.

Without actual appropriations, this bill is like a Hollywood movie set--something that appears real on the surface but has no substance and no life behind its facade. Let me say that again. Without actual appropriations, this bill is like a Hollywood movie set--something that appears real on the surface but has no substance and no life behind its false facade.

I want to clear one thing up. I have heard many of my Republican colleagues say that we should pass this bill, and we can just fill in the money later. Forgive me for being skeptical that they will actually follow through on that promise, because my friends on the other side of the aisle have been fighting for years to cut, not increase, the exact same programs they are now touting in this bill--what a sham.

With the rise of the tea party, the hard-right conservative factions in the House and Senate brought devastating proposed cuts to the health programs that combat the opioid problem, and my colleagues here who are not members of the tea party went along. Now that there is an opioid crisis, now that some are worried about reelection, oh, they are out there. Where were they last year and the year before? Where are they going to be this year in terms of actually getting some funding?

Last year, Republicans proposed billions of dollars in cuts to the Labor-HHS appropriations bill--the main funding source for substance abuse treatment. Without the bipartisan budget agreement, this would have cut $9 billion. In fact, the Senate Appropriations Committee proposed cutting the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, or SAMHSA, by $160 million before Democrats pushed to restore it. We didn't hear much of an outcry from the very same people who are out there saying they are doing things on opioids.

On the other side of the Capitol, the tea party Republicans have gone even further. In 2012, they proposed cutting SAMHSA by $283 million. The latest Paul Ryan budgets--the holy grail of Republican fiscal austerity--took a meat cleaver to this agency. He proposed cutting an estimated $400 million from SAMHSA in 2013 and 2014.

The Republican record on actually funding these programs is, frankly, abysmal. When you hear treatment centers and when you hear law enforcement say that we don't have the resources to do what we need to do to go after the opioid crisis, ask yourself why, because our colleagues on the other side of the aisle have fought increases in funding.

You can't have an additional counselor. I have held parents in my arms who said: My son or daughter didn't make it as they were waiting in line for treatment. There were not enough counselors, not enough slots. I have talked to law enforcement officials who say they want to do much more, but their hands are tied because they don't have enough cops, enough intelligence, enough follow-through on going after these evil drug dealers who are just despicable.

We want to say to our colleagues on the other side of the aisle that what they probably would have done to us is to block this bill so we should have no accomplishments. That is what happened in 2013 and 2014. We are not going to do that. This has a few good things, but it is not close to enough.

The way the appropriations process has proceeded this session, I see no reason to believe how any of this is going to change. So far the majority has been utterly unable to pass bills that contain increases in funding. Why? Why wouldn't good people here who say they want to fight opioids and come home and talk about it do it? I will tell you why. Because the hard right has a stranglehold. They say no increase in funding for anything, except maybe Defense, and even a lot of the hard right people don't want that. Everyone goes along. They are afraid of the Koch brothers, who want to cut, cut, cut. They are afraid of the Heritage Foundation that wants to cut, cut, cut, and so they give speeches and even pass a bill that makes some small improvements, but they don't get the funding. It is not that they are malicious, but they don't have the courage and strength to stand up and do what is needed, and then they are hypocritical when they go back and say they are leading the fight to go after opioid addiction. That is the problem here. After years of opposing funding for mental health and substance abuse programs, no one should believe that Republicans are going to honor their promises about CARA--yeah, down the road we will find some funding--until we see it.

Shortly the Senate will pass this bill. As soon as that happens, Republican Senators are going to run home to tout its passage as if they have single-handedly solved the opioid crisis in this country, but that will not be true. They will not mention that the bill has no funding and doesn't have the teeth it needs; they will not tell people that it doesn't include a dime for a new treatment bed, a dollar for a drug counselor's salary, or the needed increases in money for law enforcement. What it says is this: that colleagues on the other side of the aisle are more interested in showing voters they are doing something about opioids than actually doing something because they are constricted by a small, narrow, but powerful group of special interests in their party that say you can't vote for any increases in funding for anything, and it is a shame. This is an issue ripe for bipartisan compromise. It is an issue in which we can and must make real progress, but as it stands, this bill doesn't get the job done.

Every day 2,500 teenagers in America abuse prescription drugs for the first time. These are our kids, our neighbors, and our friends. We all know families that have had the anguish--and the joy that some have had as their sons and daughters have recovered. But everyone who knows people who have been fighting addiction--whether it is alcohol or prescription drug abuse or some other substance--knows that every day is a struggle and a fight. You are never sure that they will not go back. And then there are those who have lost kids. Sometimes their kids are just out on the streets, and their family doesn't know where they are, and some of them, of course, are gone. It is nothing we should be playing games with, and a small group of hard-right ideologues shouldn't be blocking change in America. We don't need a bill designed for campaign rhetoric. We need resources.

I strongly urge my Republican colleagues to schedule a vote on legislation that provides robust funding to address the opioid and heroin epidemic as soon as possible. Until we pass the increase in resources for law enforcement and treatment, both of which are so necessary, we cannot say that Congress has done what is necessary to solve and fight the opioid crisis.

be equally divided.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source