Civil Rights Cold Case Investigations Support Act of 2022

Floor Speech

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Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, home should be the safest place in the world for a child. It used to be that parents could breathe a little easier once they locked the front door, knowing that their child was safe on the inside.

For some reason or other, not anymore is that the case. Drug dealers have found ways into our homes through social media. Now, more and more children are dying alone at night in what should be the safest place for them, in their own bedrooms.

That is where Deric and Kathy Kidd found their son Sebastian, unresponsive, on the morning of July 30, 2021. He was slumped on his bed, still in his street clothes.

Sebastian was a high school senior in Des Moines, IA. He took half of what he thought was a pain pill. It was actually fentanyl. Sebastian's parents should have had the rest of their lives with him. Instead, they buried their 17-year-old son.

Congress has responded in the worst possible way to parents like the Kidd family. We have responded with inaction. I am disappointed that my Democrat colleagues have tried to block fentanyl analog scheduling. Under this Democrat-led Congress, the reauthorization periods of fentanyl analog scheduling keeps getting shorter and shorter, and bipartisan talks about permanent scheduling have all dropped. And if you don't have bipartisan talks, nothing happens in the U.S. Senate. That is what it takes to get things done in a body that takes a supermajority of 60 to stop debate to get to finality.

It doesn't matter if you are a rank-and-file Democrat or Republican, fentanyl is a problem for all of us. It is time that we start treating it like the problem it is. We can't keep ignoring law enforcement's requests for fentanyl analog scheduling. Police are the folks responding to fentanyl poisoning. Police are the ones putting their lives on the line facing off with cartels, and police are asking us to extend classification of fentanyl analog as schedule I substances.

Who are we to deny the police when they say what they need? We all agreed that fentanyl analog scheduling was necessary in 2020 when we unanimously extended it by 15 months. Even career officials in the Biden administration agreed that fentanyl analog scheduling was necessary when they asked Congress. The Biden administration asked Congress to permanently schedule it.

But here we are on the brink of fentanyl analog scheduling--the expiration of it. Families and law enforcement alike are panicked that we let this authority disappear. Temporary fentanyl analog scheduling cannot lapse while we hash out more permanent solutions.

We have all voted this provision into law before. We have been warned that more parents will have to bury their children if we do not pass it.

So, I have this motion.

45, S. 1216; further, that the Grassley amendment at the desk be considered and agreed to; that the bill, as amended, be considered read a third time and passed, and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action.

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Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I appreciate the chairman's right to do that. I appreciate his position on this whole problem that we are trying to deal with. I am just sorry that Senator Booker had to have people object for him.

It is not right. How many people have to die before we do something about it? Last year, there were over 107,000 overdose deaths, with 70,000 due to fentanyl-related substances--200 opioid overdoses in the State of Iowa.

Somebody has got to wake up around here and realize that we can do something about it. The Biden administration wants us to do something about it, and one person--not Chairman Durbin, but other people--stands in the way. It is just not right.

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