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Ms. STABENOW. Madam President, I am very proud to stand up with my colleagues and say: It is time to act. Enough is enough. Close loopholes that are being used by people who are not following the law, unfortunately resulting in death and injury to children and families across the country.
Like a lot of my colleagues, I grew up in a small rural town in Northern Michigan. My family members are all hunters. We enjoy the outdoors and gun ownership. I purchase and own guns myself. That is not what this is about. My family goes through background checks. We don't want people being able to use loopholes and not to have to follow the law. So this is simply about making sure that the law makes sense and that we are enforcing it.
I also think it is very important to stress the fact that we know there are tremendous mental health needs in this country. In fact, Senator Blunt and I offered legislation--the Excellence in Mental Health Act--before this body that was passed as a pilot project to get started about 18 months ago. If we had the full support of our Republican colleagues in the House and the Senate, we could quickly make comprehensive quality mental health services available all across the country. Instead, because we have not yet--I hope we can get that support. I would love to see that support. If we had that support, we would have more than eight States that are going to have emergency mental health services available, 24-hour services available, so families or law enforcement or individuals have a place to take someone or someone can go in themselves and ask for help--24-hour psychiatric services available on an emergency basis.
That is what is in the Excellence in Mental Health Act. We have begun the process to make sure it is available in these States. It needs to be available in 50 States. We need to make sure comprehensive services are available in the community for behavioral health just as we have for federally qualified health centers.
We came together on a bipartisan basis to extend funding for federally qualified health centers. We now have a new category called federally qualified behavioral health clinics, and funding will be available to comprehensively provide those services in eight States under our pilot project. It needs to be in 50 States.
I welcome colleagues coming to the floor and talking about what we need to do in mental health. We have colleagues on both sides of the aisle.
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Ms. STABENOW. If I may ask for 15 more seconds.
We have colleagues on both sides of the aisle on bipartisan proposals on a number of different issues. Let's get that done, too. Let's fully fund comprehensive community mental health services. Let's work together on the other issues. It is time to pass commonsense gun safety laws.
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