Halt All Lethal Trafficking of Fentanyl Act

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Ms. STANSBURY. Mr. Speaker, I want to be honest. This legislation is literally breaking my heart because I am a New Mexican, born and raised, and there is not a single family in the State of New Mexico who has not been touched by the addiction crisis--the opioid crisis, fentanyl, alcoholism. There is not a single family that I know who has not lost somebody to this crisis, including my own.

What I can tell Members about this crisis is that the way that we address it is that we stop the flow of fentanyl coming into our communities, and we make sure that our family members and our friends who are struggling with addiction can get the help that they need.

They are not criminals. They are our brothers, sisters, parents, grandparents, and children.

Do my colleagues know what it is like to have their child disappear to the streets due to addiction?

We do not need to incarcerate these people. They need help, and the way that they get help is to actually get with an addiction recovery doctor, peer support, clinic, or somewhere where they can get sober.

Mr. Speaker, if my colleagues want to actually solve this crisis, we need to stop fentanyl from coming into the United States, to make sure that our communities can access care, and to save lives and help the members of our families and communities who are trying to reclaim their lives from this crisis. That is how we solve this crisis.

That is why I cannot vote for this bill because the way that this bill tries to address the crisis is through the exact same playbook that was used in the 1980s and 1990s that led to the mass incarceration of our families and community members who were struggling with addiction.

While Republicans are standing here trying to pass this bill, literally across town the President and an unelected billionaire are gutting funding for our Federal agencies. They are doing a purge of the FBI.

Do my colleagues know who stops fentanyl from coming across the border? The FBI.

Do Members want to solve the fentanyl crisis? We have to go to the heart of the matter and not mass incarcerate the people who are actually addicted.

That is why I introduced the STOP Act. The STOP Act would actually empower the Federal Government to stop fentanyl at the border. It is why I am investing millions of dollars in my State, local, and Tribal law enforcement, to make sure that they can actually stop fentanyl in our communities. It is why I have invested millions of dollars in my community in behavioral health centers and addiction recovery and to help peer support programs so that we can save lives.

That is how the fentanyl crisis is stopped. That is how we do it.

I can say that the way that we don't do it is by empowering a billionaire, who is not even an elected or a vetted official, to gut our Federal agencies. I want to take a moment to talk about that.

Yesterday, in the Oversight Committee, in the guise of trying to promote government efficiency, my colleagues across the aisle called a hearing. When we asked for Elon Musk to come to our hearing and actually answer for what he is doing, they went out of their way to shut it down.

What is going on in this country right now? They are gutting our agencies, defunding our agencies, and holding up payments. Last week, as was said by the ranking member, they stopped payment for the very health clinics that will actually help to stop the fentanyl crisis.

My colleagues refuse to do their most basic constitutional duty, which is to bring in an unelected and unvetted official who is stealing their personal data and undermining the fundamental fabric of our democracy, our Constitution, and our institutions, to hold them to account.

That is why Ranking Member Jamie Raskin and I will be introducing legislation to hold Elon Musk accountable because nobody elected Elon Musk and because we, the taxpayers, are going to be left holding the bag when he gets bored and moves on to his billionaire buddies. We are going to be the ones left in the wake of this crisis. We are the ones who are going to have our communities and families decimated, and we will not stand for it.

Respectfully, I will vote against this legislation, and we will continue to hold the majority to account.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source