Junior Senator From Ohio Continues To Block Durbin's Attempt To Confirm U.S. Attorney Nominations On The Senate Floor
Floor Speech
"On five previous occasions, I've come to the floor of the Senate to request unanimous consent to move these nominees forward. Each time, the junior Senator from Ohio has objected. He campaigned for the Senate claiming he would be "tough on crime,' but now that he's here, he proudly brags that he wants to "grind the Department of Justice to a halt.' These communities desperately need these nominees in place."
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
"How important is the U.S. Attorney's office for the Northern District of Ohio that he is holding up? The entire nation has been impacted by the opioid epidemic, but Ohio has been especially hard hit. In recent years, fentanyl has been involved in 80 percent of unintentional drug overdose deaths within the state of Ohio. Last year, federal law enforcement officials and local partners in Ohio seized over 87,000 fentanyl-laden tablets in a span of less than four months. Over the course of one year, from April 2022 to April 2023, more than 5,000 Ohioans lost their lives to drug overdoses. Five thousand. Let that sink in. On average, every day 14 Ohio families lose a loved one to drugs. How important is it to have is a U.S. Attorney in Ohio and in Illinois working on this drug crisis that claims so many lives every single day? Can we really make an excuse that we have some political petulance at work on the floor of the Senate that stops us from putting a prosecutor in place to stop this drug trafficking?
You can be upset, petulant, worried, hate it that a friend of yours in politics has been indicted, but to hold that up against the people of Ohio and the families [of individuals] that are dying on such a regular basis from these narcotics, that is shortsighted. That does not really reach the level that we as Senators should aspire to.
How can you explain to the people of Ohio and Illinois that you're trying to get some way to make it even on political grounds at their expense? For goodness sakes, for the sake of your families in your own home state, give these U.S. Attorneys a chance to fight to make life safer for these families."
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