Commerce, Justice, Science, Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, Interior, Environment, Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, Transportation, and Housing and Urban Development Appropriations Act, 2020

Floor Speech

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Mrs. CAPITO. Mr. President, I think it is very impactful for us to be discussing today a problem that has hit all of our States.

Senator Blunt, in his great work not just on the Appropriations Committee but in his State of Missouri, has been very active. I think we all have. It is a problem that knows no political boundaries.

Certainly, my State of West Virginia has one of the deepest, strongest, and toughest problem. We have the highest rate of opioid- related deaths per capita. It is not something we wear proudly, but it is something that has really forced us to try many innovative things and to try to be the leader in the solutions.

That is a lot of what I am going to talk about today because a lot of what we have seen in the SUPPORT Act, from all of our individual States, has been incorporated into a national response to what is an epidemic around our country that is frightening, scary, and, in my view, could almost lead us to losing a generation. This powerful reaction we have had to the three pieces of legislation is absolutely critical.

We passed the SUPPORT Act. It was signed into law a little bit over a year ago. That was really as an add-on to the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act that we passed several years before that, but as my part of this discussion today, I want to share the successes that have worked in our State and how I think they have been able to be incorporated around the country.

After CARA, we realized that while we did great with money for rehab facilities and helping our first responders with Narcan and other more immediate problems, there were other things we didn't focus on that we really needed to focus on in order to have a comprehensive solution, and that is the children--the children who are impacted in a home of addiction or exposure to addiction and also the jobs that are being lost because of it. So we went back to the drawing board, and we came up with the SUPPORT Act, which is landmark legislation where we are seeing real results.

For instance, in my State of West Virginia, the State opioid response grants are the grants that really go to every State in a formula fashion, where you are supporting treatment centers, drug courts, and other responses to the addiction issue, but under the old rule, the money was divided up according to your population size. So I started talking with Senator Shaheen from New Hampshire--a small State impacted more critically, like our State of West Virginia--and saying: Wait a minute. Our smaller States are really not getting enough in the State opioid response grants to make an impact and to be part of the solution. So we pushed hard to change this funding so States that are more acutely affected, that have smaller populations, like Montana, West Virginia, and New Hampshire, are able to get more funding so we can attack the problem where it is the deepest and the most acute.

It helps with our WVU Comprehensive Opioid Addiction Treatment, the COAT, Program, the model they have put together at WVU for medication- assisted treatment made. It helps with our peer recovery coaches, and it has also had a lot of impact on our children and our families.

What we have also found, like every State here, I am sure--in the State of Arkansas, you probably have more kids in foster care than you have had in the past because of this issue. According to our West Virginia Bureau of Children and Families, approximately 82 percent of the children who are in foster care are there because of parents with substance abuse-related issues. That is 82 percent of our children, and we have thousands more in foster care. It is directly attributable to this issue. It doesn't even mention all the grandparents and great- grandparents, in some cases, who are raising children.

How do we tackle the ripple effects of this issue? Well, you can create something that was also created in West Virginia called the Martinsburg Initiative. It is spearheaded by the Martinsburg Police Department--a small city very close to DC, the West Virginia part that is close to DC--the Berkeley County Schools, and Shepherd University. It is a partnership with the Boys & Girls Club of the Eastern Panhandle.

This is based on a CDC study that shows that when children have adverse childhood experiences--called ACES--if you can categorize children who have adverse childhood experiences, if you can identify those children and pay special attention to them through things like the Martinsburg Initiative, you can maybe head off issues that could come into their future.

So police officers come to the schools. They mentor the children. I met them at the Boys & Girls Club of the Eastern Panhandle and talked about the positive influence a police officer, combined with the schools, combined with a college student, can have on a young person's life--and, in some cases, the most trusted person in their life--if they are subject to a home that is filled with drug and opioid addiction. We saw the success of this.

I joined with Senator Durbin--again, across the aisle--to ensure that the SUPPORT Act created some of this. We are now taking it the next step forward to address these issues in the RISE from Trauma Act, which would help us to build the trauma-informed workforce--we don't have enough people working in this area--and increase those resources in our communities.

Senator Blunt talked about how important it is to work with babies who are born with exposure to drugs. This is also a part of the solution that has come from West Virginia, where the baby is taken out of the hospital setting to try to address the issues of that first trauma in the first days of their life, to try to wean them off of not just the exposure to drugs but also to incorporate the family into this so they can see what kind of pediatric recovery is needed and what the long-term effects might be.

Senator Portman has been an incredible leader, trying to get rid of the fentanyl that comes in that is killing people. Over half of the people who die, die of a fentanyl overdose. He is trying to work with China and to work with the post office to get the tools to prevent illegal fentanyl from entering this country. We have had some success, but it is still frustrating. There is too much getting in.

I chair the Homeland Security Subcommittee on Appropriations. This is a big issue for our Border Patrol and our ICE agents to be able to make sure we are giving our post office the tools.

Another thing we did was we passed the INTERDICT Act, which the President signed, which will help the CBP and also the post office be able to detect fentanyl. It comes in these little packages because it is so very lethal.

A lot of what we have done is Federal funding, but a lot of what we have done is listen to what our local communities are doing and listen to how they are solving problem in States that are highly affected.

One of our communities of Huntington has really been a leader in this. One of the most effective strategies that Huntington has had--and Huntington had the highest overdose rate in our State--was to create these quick response teams. This is when a person comes into the emergency room with an overdose and is discharged, they are then contacted within 72 hours by a quick response team from the community. A plainclothes police officer, with a health officer or a social worker, and, in some cases, a faith-based respondent comes in and says: Are you ready for recovery? When you are ready for recovery, this is where you go. We are your community. We want to help you. We understand where you are. We understand your issues. We are your neighbors, and we want to help you.

This has really already had a very good effect in the city of Huntington, in Cabell County, because the overdose rate in that area has gone down 26 percent since they instituted the quick response team concept. So it is going across the country, and part of that is because it is in the SUPPORT Act.

I have hope for what we have done in West Virginia, but there are way too many people and families who are affected by this. There are too many lost lives, too much lost time, and too much lost love, quite frankly. There are parents of children who can't sleep at night. The only night they sleep is when they know their child is incarcerated because they don't know if they are going to wake up the next morning. There is story after story of just tragedies.

We are all working together. I think we have a long way to go. I think we have hit on some good solutions. We need to keep the ones that are working, and the ones that don't work, send them on down the road because we know there is no one solution to this very difficult problem.

I am going to continue to fight with my colleagues here today for every single person and all those folks whose lives are touched by this crisis.

Do you know what? We are all touched by it. If I ask for a show of hands in a townhall meeting and say: Who knows somebody who has been touched by this crisis, it is almost unanimous. Everybody raises their hands.

We are going to emerge stronger. I am optimistic, but this is a long fight. I am really pleased to join with so many of my colleagues in this fight.

I think my colleague from Arkansas, who has worked hard on this as well, is the next one up.

Thank you.

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