Support for Patients and Communities Reauthorization Act of 2025

Floor Speech

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Ms. DEXTER. Mr. Chair, I rise today not just as a Member of this body but as a physician who has spent nearly two decades caring for patients in the intensive care unit, many of them fighting for their lives because of a system that has failed to support them before a crisis hit.

In Oregon's Third District, we see every day how critical prevention, treatment, and recovery programs are. We need those programs that my colleague from New Jersey just referred to as being cut. This bill does nothing to repair those cuts.

These aren't abstract policy ideas. They are the difference between life and death for many of my constituents. They are critical for the health and safety of Oregonians and Americans across this country.

That is why efforts to sustain and strengthen these programs matter deeply to the communities I represent. They are essential for the parents working two jobs while navigating recovery, for the young people trying to build a future after surviving an overdose, and for families trying to heal.

Let's not kid ourselves. While Republicans bring this reauthorization bill to the floor, they stand by as the Trump administration dismantles the very agency responsible for implementing these programs. They have fired experts, erased offices, and rescinded over a billion dollars already allocated to State and local response. Just 2 weeks ago, they passed the largest Medicaid cut in history out of this Chamber despite the fact that Medicaid covers 40 percent of Americans addicted to opioids.

This wasn't fiscal accountability. It was a decision to directly undermine the access of care for millions of people who need it most. These are people who desperately need our compassion and care.

Do not be fooled by this game of smoke and mirrors. This kind of hypocrisy cannot go unchallenged. Claiming to support recovery while simultaneously gutting the programs that make it possible is politics at its worst.

My Republican colleagues cannot honestly stand for people's need to access treatment while kneecapping the agency that is accountable for providing it.

Lives are at stake, and the American people are watching. They do know what it means when elected leaders say one thing and do another, and they deserve honesty and real action.

Mr. Chair, I thank my colleague from New Jersey for this debate.

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