Federal Aviation Administration Reauthorization Act of 2016

Floor Speech

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Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I wish to address two issues which the Senate Finance Committee has spent a considerable amount of time on, and both of them are examples of how the Senate is leaving important work undone on its way out the door. I am going to begin by discussing the opioid bill.

If ever there were an issue that ought to be unifying the Congress and bringing Democrats and Republicans together to surmount an important challenge, it ought to be opioid addiction in America. This is a crisis indiscriminate of geography and politics. The reality is that opioid addiction is ripping through our communities like wildfire. A recent editorial in one of my home State newspapers captured the extreme urgency of the opioid struggle, the addiction, with this statement: ``Opioids are winning.''

After months of work, the Senate and House have come up with an opioid bill. I can give my assessment in a sentence: It is a half- measure. The job is far from complete, and certainly nobody ought to be taking victory laps. The reality is that this opioid bill leaves many opportunities to fight and successfully win the battle against opioid addiction on the negotiating table.

A landmark study dealing with opioids came out a few months ago and found that 80 percent of those who were addicted to painkillers or heroin weren't getting treatment.

I want everybody to understand that under this bill, those waiting lines are not going to get much shorter. The thousands of babies born each year with an addiction to narcotics--this bill won't be enough to bring that number down to zero, where everybody knows it should be. And there is a moral imperative to actually get it to zero. That is why there are headlines stating that opioids are winning the war.

The package before the Senate certainly has the kernels of a meaningful game plan, but, in my view, there is just not enough there. There are programs being established that could be a big help to those who are struggling to get their lives back on track, but there aren't the tools to deliver on that promise.

Senators should know that doing only half the job now means that Members are going to be leading with their chins when the appropriations process returns later this year. The reason I say that is there are some programs that are going to be bumping up against the uncertainty of the appropriations process.

There is a program for pregnant women and new mothers suffering from an opioid-use disorder.

There is a program to help States take important strides when it comes to monitoring prescription drugs.

There is better tracking within the VA.

There is a plan to strengthen the network of support in American communities that is best equipped to reach out to those who need support in fighting addiction, which includes physicians, employers, the criminal justice system, and more.

The bill green-lights the National Institutes of Health putting new energy into the development of safe, nonaddictive, effective, and affordable drugs and treatments for chronic pain.

The bill establishes a task force and grants for States to construct what I believe could be a fresh approach to pain management and opioids, including education programs, treatment, recovery efforts, prescription monitoring, and strategies to prevent overdose.

Getting those proposals off the ground is a first step, but with the Senate on its way out the door, it seems to me that you also have to do more than just leave the strategy for actually winning against opioid addiction to the uncertainty of the appropriations process in the fall.

There are other questions about this bill. I am very concerned about the provision that gives $75 million in special kickbacks to the manufacturers of opioids that are considered under the bill ``abuse deterrents.'' I believe it is wrong for the bill, which only does half the job for Americans struggling with addiction, to then turn around and give an unjustified windfall to big drug companies. I offered an amendment to get rid of the windfall, and it was very simple. I said: Let's give that money to pregnant women who are enrolled in Medicaid, women of limited means who are struggling to fight addiction. But the choice was made to give the windfall to the drug companies rather than to help those vulnerable women who are trying to get their lives back on track. We shouldn't be giving funding to programs that really help women and others who are trying to overcome addiction and then turn around and give a $75 million windfall to drug companies. That, in my view, is an imbalance that does not pass the smell test.

The bottom line on the opioid legislation is that there is an awful lot of heavy lifting to do before anybody ought to think about taking a victory lap. My State--and it pains me to say this--is the fourth worst State in the country when it comes to opioid abuse. I hear from Oregonians who have gone from pills, to heroin, to a tragic ending. I hear accounts that nobody could have ever dreamed of.

I was blessed to go to school on a basketball scholarship. Nobody heard about basketball players who had an injury getting hooked on opioids and having tragic, premature endings and opportunities choked off. We didn't hear those stories then, but we hear them now.

I have heard from doctors and pharmacists about the dangers drugs pose and the difficulty of treating pain safely. I hear from community leaders who are trying fresh approaches to reach out to young people. My sense is that every single Member of the Senate is hearing these kinds of stories.

I want it understood that the opioid addiction crisis is going to keep raging unabated. Lives are going to continue to be lost and families are going to continue to be torn apart until the Senate finishes the rest of the job, and the rest of the job is still ahead of us. Nomination of Mary Wakefield

Mr. President, I have unfinished business that needs to be addressed, and that is the yearlong obstruction in front of the Senate Finance Committee on a supremely qualified nominee, Dr. Mary Wakefield, who is the President's choice to be the Deputy Secretary of Health and Human Services. Her nomination has been sitting in purgatory longer than any other such choice in history, and it is for reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with her qualifications.

I am going to talk about what is causing the holdup, but I want to spend a little bit of time talking about Dr. Wakefield and the important role she has been nominated to fill. She is up for the No. 2 spot at Health and Human Services, which would make her the chief operating officer of a Department that is taking on some of our most important health challenges, including opioid addiction. They manage the most important health programs in the country. This Department is on the frontlines in the battle against Zika. They run the Centers for Disease Control, the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health, child welfare programs, family support programs, and it goes on and on.

I felt from the outset that she was the right person for this job. She is somebody who has seen the American health care system from all sides. She comes from rural America. She hails from North Dakota and sought out more opportunities to help individuals by working in policy and managing programs. She was a nurse, and she said: I want to do more, and I am going to be able to do it by learning more about these health policies. So she earned a master's degree, a Ph.D., and then she served as a legislative assistant and chief of staff in the Senate. She has proven herself most able as the head of the Health Resources and Services Administration. This is almost a textbook case of somebody qualified to do this job.

When the Finance Committee met in February to discuss her nomination, she was winning plaudits from both sides of the aisle. My friend, Chairman Hatch, said Dr. Wakefield has an ``impressive background and a reputation for being a problem solver.'' Those are not my words. They are the words of Chairman Hatch.

Senator Hoeven, who introduced Dr. Wakefield at that hearing, said, ``She is a dedicated public servant and a hard-working health care advocate.''

And Senator Hoeven, whom we all respect, like Senator Hatch, made the important point that Dr. Wakefield is an advocate especially for rural America. She believes Americans deserve access to high-quality health care, regardless of their ZIP Code, and she has certainly walked the walk as a nurse and as a practitioner.

Senator Hoeven encouraged the Finance Committee to support Dr. Wakefield's nomination and ``send her to the full Senate for confirmation.''

Unfortunately, this process of moving this highly qualified nominee has ground to a halt. There have been kind of two stages of this process. First, in February, Senator Grassley indicated he would put a hold on the nomination on the ground that he and other Republican Senators had not received adequate responses to the questions they had raised about Planned Parenthood. Now, these questions had absolutely nothing to do with what Dr. Wakefield had been involved in. Senator Grassley's questions were answered months ago, but as soon as that was accomplished, there was another objection.

In March, the Republican members of the Finance Committee sent a letter to the inspector general raising questions about a complaint against the State of California regarding what is the so-called Weldon amendment. The amendment prohibits recipients of appropriated funds from discriminating against health care providers who do not cover abortion services. We were told the Wakefield nomination could not be considered until those issues with respect to California and the Weldon amendment were resolved.

Once again, we are seeing issues raised that have absolutely nothing to do with Dr. Wakefield, a nurse, someone who hails from rural America, who Republican Senators say is eminently qualified, to be held up for matters that had nothing to do with her nomination. She wasn't the subject of the investigation. She didn't work in California. There has been no allegation she has been involved in any way in the matters being investigated.

Several weeks ago, the Office of Civil Rights concluded their investigation of California and the Weldon amendment. It concluded the Weldon amendment had not been violated, really not even implicated, because none of the parties bringing the complaint were even covered by the amendment. So as a matter of law, there was no violation.

Now, one would normally think that would finally clear the decks; no issues left related to Dr. Wakefield's nomination. Even the issues unrelated to her nomination had been resolved. So one would think we would be ready to go, ready to forward the nomination. That has not been the case. My understanding is, on the other side of the aisle, Republican members of the Finance Committee are still unwilling to favorably report the nomination.

So a highly qualified nominee is being needlessly blocked for reasons that--and I have spent a lot of time digging into this--are completely unrelated to her qualifications and the position she has been nominated to.

It just seems to me the people we represent deserve more when it comes to the consideration of vital nominees--vital nominees like Dr. Wakefield--and legislation that ought to really shorten those waiting lines for opioid treatment and respond fully to the challenge of opioid addiction. The Congress ought to be doing its job. It ought to be doing more than making political points and passing half measures.

I will close by way of saying that I think as much as any Member of this body, I have made a commitment to working in a bipartisan way. It is what I want to be the hallmark of my time in public service. I will just close by way of saying that I think both fighting opioid addiction and making sure that qualified people who have been recommended by senior Republicans can actually be considered here in both instances. The Congress and the Senate owe more to the American people.

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