Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act of 2015

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Nevada for yielding to me to speak for a moment in response to the comments made by my colleagues about the legislation before us, which is legislation to address the horrible problem we have in all our States of the addictions caused by heroin and prescription drugs. About 100 people will die today from overdoses, and that is just the tip of the iceberg because there are so many other people whose lives are being ruined, families being torn apart, and communities being devastated.

Senator Whitehouse, other Members of this body, and I drafted this legislation over the period of the last few years, including five summits we had in this Congress to bring in experts from all over the country on prevention, education, treatment, and recovery--dealing with the law enforcement side and the importance of having Narcan available and also helping to get prescription drugs off bathroom shelves and ensure we had drug-monitoring programs. It is a comprehensive approach.

I will say I disagree a little with my coauthor, my colleague from Rhode Island, in saying that if we could pass this bill, there would be no funding for it somehow. There was a huge increase in funding, as everyone knows, at the end of the year for opioids. Senator Whitehouse, others, and I approached the appropriators and asked them to be sure that funding was consistent with where we were on CARA at that time--in the middle of the Judiciary Committee. When we had some jurisdictional issues, we worked hard to draft the legislation so that if we could get it enacted this fiscal year--that is between now and September 30-- there would be funding to help us accomplish what is in the legislation.

However, as my colleagues know, this bill is an authorization bill. What does that mean? It means it is a bill that directs how funding will be spent. It is not a spending bill.

Having said all that, as Senator Shaheen knows, I supported her efforts to add additional resources over and above what could be spent this year on CARA because I believe this is such an urgent problem, and I believe it does rise to the level of being an emergency. That is saying a lot. I am a fiscal conservative. But that means it is not paid for by offsetting other programs. It is just additional funding because it is such an urgent need.

We have done this on other occasions with health care emergencies when we have had something like the Ebola crisis. Well, I think this is a crisis too, so I voted with Senator Shaheen today. I am a cosponsor of her amendment. I support it, but I don't support the efforts of some who say somehow there is no money in here. This is an authorization bill. This is the first step toward getting the money, not just this year but into the future. That is the point.

Back in the House, I was the author of the Drug-Free Communities Act. Some 19 years later, $1.3 billion has been spent in support of the Drug-Free Communities Act, helping to create over 2,000 community coalitions, including in just about every State represented in this body. Was that a spending bill? No. It was like this--an authorization bill to direct the spending based on a lot of research and effort, evidence-based practices we know would work. That is what this is. This is taking it to the next level.

Specifically directed to the points my good friend from Maine just mentioned about treatment centers being filled and detox centers not having room for someone to go to get the detox and then get into treatment, these are real problems in our communities now. That is what this legislation is meant to address, not just by appropriations for 1 year but by changing the law for the future.

If we do this, and do it right, in another 19 years in this legislation, we will spend even more than we spent on the Drug-Free Communities Act. It will be well over $2 billion that will have been spent that would otherwise not have gone out because of this legislation. So just as Senator Whitehouse said that he strongly supports this bill because it is evidence based, because we spent the right time putting the effort into making sure it would be money well spent, this bill is really important.

I appreciate the support of my colleagues--Senators Shaheen, King, and Whitehouse. Senator Whitehouse and I have been at this for a few years together. It is the right thing to do for our country at a time when we do face a crisis.

Again, I will support the additional spending because I think this is so critical. But let's not go forward with this sense that somehow this doesn't matter. This does matter in a very big way. This is a necessary first step. And in terms of this year, because we increased funding dramatically at the end of the year for this fiscal year--not one penny of that has been outlaid, by the way; it has been appropriated but there has been no outlay yet--I believe anything we could get done this year--getting it through the House, getting it through the Senate, and the President signing it--would be funding we could use for these important CARA programs just in the 7 months of this fiscal year.

Certainly we should right now--as I have done and I know Senator Whitehouse is doing and others are doing--go to the Committee on Appropriations and say: With regard to next fiscal year, let's be sure that we have the entire bill funded. And again, I would support even additional funding beyond that. But at a minimum, let's get this done. This is an opportunity on a bipartisan basis to actually get something done to help people who are crying out for our help. Communities need our help. Families that are being broken apart need our help.

I appreciate the fact Senator Shaheen made her best effort today. She was right, in my view, but let's also continue to work together to get this legislation passed with whatever funding we can add to it. That is great with me, but let's get this bill passed to ensure that going into the future we are directing this funding effectively and increasing this funding to help those who need it most.

Again, I appreciate my colleague from Nevada, and I am sorry to take so much of his time.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source