[Congressional Record Volume 161, Number 101 (Tuesday, June 23, 2015)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4539-S4541]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
DEFENDING PUBLIC SAFETY EMPLOYEES' RETIREMENT ACT--Continued
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wisconsin.
Jason Simcakoski Memorial Opioid Safety Act
Ms. BALDWIN. Madam President, I rise not to speak about an issue that
divides this Chamber but rather one that unites us; that is, the care
of those who have served and sacrificed for our Nation, America's
veterans.
Today, I take great pride in the fact I have worked across the aisle
to introduce bipartisan VA reform legislation, the Jason Simcakoski
Memorial Opioid Safety Act. I am pleased to be joined in offering this
legislation by my friend and colleague Senator Capito of West Virginia.
This legislation is aimed at addressing the problem of
overprescribing practices at the VA and providing safer and more
effective pain management services to our Nation's veterans. It is
named in honor of a Wisconsin veteran, U.S. Marine veteran Jason
Simcakoski.
On August 30, 2014, Jason tragically died at Wisconsin's Tomah
Veterans Affairs Medical Center as a result of what was medically
deemed mixed-drug toxicity. I call this a failure to serve someone who
has faithfully served our country.
At the time of his death at the VA, Jason was on 14 different
prescription drugs. Yet this Marine's heartbreaking story is just one
example of the overprescribing problem at the VA.
After two, decade-long, wars, a large number of our servicemembers
are coming home with the damage of combat, and our veterans and their
families are facing the difficult challenge of physical injuries, PTSD,
and other mental illnesses.
Unfortunately, I believe the VA's overreliance on powerful and highly
addicting opioids has resulted in getting our veterans hooked rather
than getting them help. Jason's story is a tragic example of the
devastation caused by addiction--addiction whose roots are,
regrettably, at the VA.
To me, overprescription of opioids at the VA is a root problem, and
it is growing into a weed--a weed of addiction whose impact is being
felt beyond the walls of VA facilities. The ripples are indeed being
felt across America in the communities we work for every day in our
Nation's Capital.
The families whom we have a responsibility to represent--families of
those who have bravely served our country--are struggling with the loss
of a son or a daughter, a father or a mother, a sister or a brother to
addiction whose root is planted within the VA system. It is our job to
make sure they do not feel alone, and I believe we have a shared
responsibility to do everything we can to pull out this weed by its
roots.
Jason's family is in Washington today, and I am so honored to have
worked with them and others in putting these reforms together to
provide the VA with the tools it needs to help prevent this type of
tragedy from occurring to other veterans and their families.
I what to thank the Simcakoski family and let them know I have a
tremendous amount of respect for the courage they have shown in telling
theirs and Jason's story and working to make a difference in the lives
of other veterans and their families.
Their story is one of a sacred trust we must have with our veterans
and their families. It is a story of how that trust has been broken,
and it is a tragic story of loss.
My message to my colleagues comes from Jason's widow Heather, who has
said:
When I look back at the past, I want to know we made a
difference. I want to believe we have leaders in our country
who care. I want to inspire others to never give up because
change is possible.
Her words have inspired me, and it is my hope they will inspire my
colleagues to join us in taking action. I hope I speak for all of us
when I say there is no room for politics when it comes to ensuring that
our Nation's veterans receive the timely, safe, and highest quality
care that they have earned.
Our legislation takes steps to give veterans and their families a
stronger voice in their care by strengthening opioid prescribing
guidelines and other measures. It also works to improve coordination
and communication throughout the VA and puts in place stronger
oversight and accountability for the quality of care we are providing
our veterans.
Our goal is simple: put these bipartisan reforms in place to prevent
tragedies like Jason's from occurring to other veterans and their
families.
I wish to thank and recognize Senators Blumenthal, Brown, Hirono,
Johnson, Kaine, Manchin, Markey, Moran, Murray, Sanders, and Tester for
joining Senator Capito and me, signing on as original cosponsors of
this bipartisan effort. I also wish to thank the many veterans service
organizations and medical professionals for their invaluable support,
insight, and input as we crafted this legislation.
Today, I ask the rest of my colleagues to join us in working to
confront the problems of overprescribing practices at the VA and to
provide more safe and effective pain management services to our
Nation's veterans.
Let us work together to fix what has been broken and restore that
sacred trust with our veterans and their families. Let us work together
to give our veterans and their families a voice--a voice that is heard,
respected, and recognized. Let us be inspired by that voice to take
bipartisan action on solutions to prevent these problems and tragedies
from ever happening again and to provide our veterans and their
families with the care they have earned and the care they deserve.
Madam President, I yield time to my coauthor on this bill Senator
Capito.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from West Virginia.
Mrs. CAPITO. Madam President, I come here before you today, joined by
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my colleague Senator Baldwin from Wisconsin--but also by colleagues
from both sides of the aisle, as she mentioned--in support of
legislation to provide safer and more effective pain management to our
Nation's veterans.
Too many of our veterans have returned from overseas duties only to
fight another battle here at home. The Jason Simcakoski Memorial Opioid
Safety Act takes the necessary steps to address challenges faced by our
veterans.
Again, I thank the Simcakoskis for their bravery and courage, as
painful as it is for the family, in hopes that it will help--and it
will help--the next generation of veterans who are being treated at the
VA.
This bill reforms the overreliance on painkillers by the VA while
still ensuring that veterans receive appropriate medication. This
legislation not only updates and strengthens the guidelines for opioid
prescriptions, but it requires the Department of Veterans Affairs to
expand the scope of research, education, delivery, and integration of
alternative pain management. Chronic pain should not be something our
veterans are forced to live with, and the VA must be on the cutting
edge of developing effective pain management.
This bill will elevate the role of patient advocates--as I am sure
Jason's wife was a great patient advocate--require community meetings
hosted by the VA, and establish a joint DOD-VA working group to improve
coordination and communication at all levels of government.
In an era where medical research and technological advancements have
led to at least a 90-percent survival rate for our wounded soldiers, we
must continue to focus on the battles our veterans face when they
return home, including treatment of those wounds that are not evidently
visible.
One marine in my hometown, Andrew White, returned home to West
Virginia after serving in Iraq. Andrew displayed signs of PTSD,
including insomnia, nightmares, constant restlessness, and pain related
to an injury. In addition to antidepressant and antianxiety pills,
doctors placed Andrew on a strong antipsychotic drug and, over time,
increased his dosage from 25 milligrams to 1600 milligrams--more than
twice the dosage recommended to treat schizophrenia. Andrew White died
in his sleep at the age of 23.
Andrew is a reminder of the physical and mental side effects of the
war. We must work together to provide the resources and care necessary
to assist our veterans in their transition into civilian life.
Expansion of the Opioid Safety Initiative and further development of
the opioid therapy risk support tool will do just that. These measures
will enable the VA to use the patient record database to detect those
at higher risk of opioid abuse and submit information to the State
prescription drug monitoring programs. We really need all hands on
deck. This real-time tracking of information will enable medical
professionals to better diagnose and treat patients.
This legislation calls for more accountability within the VA through
internal audits, reports to Congress, and increased information
sharing. We cannot allow bureaucracy to get in the way of delivering
quality care to veterans, and we must prioritize the efficient delivery
of care.
In my home State of West Virginia, the tragic effects of opioid abuse
have left families devastated. I have met with other families who lost
their loved ones who suffered from PTSD and traumatic brain injury, and
I believe more can be done to find solutions.
It is incumbent upon us in a bipartisan way, as my colleague has
said, to do right by our veterans. I wish to thank Senator Baldwin. I
have been at committee meeting after committee meeting with her where
she has pounded the drum on the importance of this issue and how
devastating it is to families across this country. I thank Senator
Baldwin.
Our best is not just the least we can do. It is our duty to those who
have served, of whom we have asked so much, to do more than our best,
and this bill does that.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. MORAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Gardner). Without objection, it is so
ordered.
Mr. MORAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to address the
Senate as in morning business.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Data Breach at OPM
Mr. MORAN. Mr. President, earlier today the Financial Services and
General Government Appropriations Subcommittee, of which I am a member,
conducted a hearing on the data security breach at the Office of
Personnel Management. I am a member of that subcommittee, and we had
several witnesses, including OPM Director Archuleta. Our goal was to
learn about the latest data breach that was revealed earlier this
month.
I think that in many ways the hearing was useful and in other ways it
was inadequate. The hearing once again demonstrated that much more
needs to be done to address the ongoing IT management issues which
plague so many agencies but in particular OPM.
As our witnesses testified, the recent breach--and really, it is
breaches--at OPM was not a resource issue but a management issue. Too
often--and I certainly understand that how we appropriate money is
important--the excuse is we don't have enough resources. Today, in my
view, it was made clear that this is much more of a management issue
than a resource issue.
As Director Archuleta said in her confirmation hearing as well as in
today's hearing, IT security was her top priority when she entered the
agency in November of 2013. But what has transpired since then has been
troubling. She reminded me today that in her confirmation hearing--IT
data security was her top priority when she arrived at the agency in
late 2013.
Ms. Archuleta highlighted the fact that in March of 2014, OPM
detected a sophisticated attack targeting sensitive information. While
the hackers didn't get information in that particular instance, this
should have been the first alarm to go off that somebody was trying to
get access to very sensitive documents.
I will reiterate what I am talking about in this case. This was March
of 2014. We are talking about a hack attempt that occurred last year,
not the ones that are making the news today. Unfortunately, it happened
again a year ago--in June of 2014--when a company that was involved in
background checks for the government, U.S. Investigation Services,
USIS, suffered a breach impacting as many as 26,000 Federal employee
records. It happened again in August of 2014--a third time. So we have
March, June, and August. In August of 2014, another company involved in
background checks, KeyPoint, was breached, and this time over 48,000
records were stolen.
In both of these contractor breaches, OPM was required to send out
notifications to Federal employees who were affected. Clearly OPM knew
about these breaches. Now we have learned that the credentials stolen
in those original breaches were used to enter the OPM system and this
time steal highly sensitive information. The information stolen was
Social Security numbers, military records, veteran status, addresses,
birth dates, job and pay history, health insurance, life insurance,
pension, age, gender, race, and union status. So these three separate
examples should have been the stark warning to secure this highly
sensitive data.
When I asked the Director today about this topic, she merely pointed
to an IT modernization plan that was drafted when she entered the
agency about 20 months ago. My question was: Having seen these three
attempts to breach the information at OPM, what then occurred at OPM
following that which was different to further and better protect
information at the Office of Personnel Management? The answer was
really about pointing to a plan that was developed when the Director
initially arrived at OPM some 20 months ago.
In addition to those three breaches, if those were not warning
enough, there were two other important reports which also could have
and should have suggested that better management was
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needed. In November 2014, the inspector general for OPM released its
annual report on Federal information security. That report found that
11 of the 47 major information systems--23 percent--at OPM lacked
proper security authorization. In fact, 5 of the 11 systems were in the
office of the Chief Information Officer, the person responsible for the
agency's data security.
This morning, Ms. Archuleta was proud to claim that the agency had
been upgraded to just ``significant deficiency'' with regard to its IT
system, up from ``material weakness.'' And the inspector general
testified this morning that they had offered 29 recommendations in
their November report, and to date only 3 of the 29 recommendations had
been adopted.
In addition to the inspector general report in November of 2014, in
December--the following month--of 2014, the General Accounting Office,
or GAO, issued a report highly critical of IT management at OPM. The
report identified best practices that OPM should implement to improve
IT management. The report found that ``OPM's efforts to modernize
retirement processing have been plagued by IT management weaknesses''--
another indication that OPM desperately needed to address IT
management, which our witnesses argue is critical to ensuring agency-
wide security.
So my takeaway from this morning's hearing is that all the warning
signs were there. OPM was aware of the persistent issues. They knew
about breaches to their contractors, and the agency knew they were a
target. Yet the only evidence that OPM did anything was a plan that was
written in the first 100 days of the new Director's tenure at OPM.
Planning is important, but execution matters a lot more.
We still need lots of answers as to what OPM did following those
original breaches last year. What security plan did they put in place?
Have they identified which information to secure? How did they secure
these documents? Were they effective in preventing other attacks? How
often did the OPM Director and the CIO, the Chief Information Officer,
meet and what were their discussions?
I am encouraged to know that our Financial Services and General
Government Appropriations Subcommittee intends to have another hearing,
and this time we will have the opportunity to present it in a secured
setting so that no one can indicate that they are incapable of
answering the question because of security issues. I look forward to
that hearing. However, I will tell my colleagues that it is
discouraging to know what I now know, and it is a discouraging time for
IT security and the Federal Government.
I hope we can use this as a lesson for other agencies that they need
to be vigilant. We face real and serious threats. Inaction by agencies
put Federal workers, the American people, and, most importantly, our
national security at risk.
In my view, this is important. These hearings matter. The information
we are garnering and attempting to garner is important for those who
are employees of the Federal Government. They need to know what has
transpired so they can better protect themselves. Why are they at risk
because of these hacks? Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, we need
to know what has transpired here. Processes need to be in place to
prevent additional challenges to our information technology, because it
is a matter of our national security.
So for the sake of our Federal employees and their well-being but
also for the sake of the American citizens and our national security,
this is not an issue that we have the opportunity to avoid. Answers
need to be forthcoming and decisions need to be made system-wide--not
just at OPM but throughout the entire Federal Government--as we work to
protect those who work for the Federal Government and as we work to
protect American citizens from a national security perspective.
With that, I thank the Chair for the opportunity to address the
Senate.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
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