[Congressional Record Volume 162, Number 76 (Friday, May 13, 2016)]
[House]
[Pages H2374-H2376]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




   MOTION TO GO TO CONFERENCE ON S. 524, COMPREHENSIVE ADDICTION AND 
                              RECOVERY ACT

  Mrs. BROOKS of Indiana. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the 
House insist on its amendments to the bill (S. 524) to authorize the 
Attorney General and Secretary of Health and Human Services to award 
grants to address the national epidemics of prescription opioid abuse 
and heroin use, and to provide for the establishment of an inter-agency 
task force to review, modify, and update best practices for pain 
management and prescribing pain medication, and for other purposes, and 
request a conference with the Senate thereon.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Clerk will report the title of the bill.
  The Clerk read the title of the bill.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentlewoman from Indiana?
  There was no objection.


                 Motion to Instruct Offered by Ms. Esty

  Ms. ESTY. Mr. Speaker, I have a motion to instruct conferees at the 
desk.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Clerk will report the motion.
  The Clerk read as follows:

       Ms. Esty moves that the managers on the part of the House 
     at the conference on the disagreeing votes of the two Houses 
     on the House amendments to the bill S. 524 (an Act to 
     authorize the Attorney General to award grants to address the 
     national epidemics of prescription opioid abuse and heroin 
     use) be instructed to recede to title III of the bill 
     (relating to treatment and recovery programs).

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to clause 7 of rule XXII, the 
gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. Esty) and the gentlewoman from 
Indiana (Mrs. Brooks) each will control 30 minutes.
  The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from Connecticut.
  Ms. ESTY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Mr. Speaker, I rise today to offer a motion which would instruct the 
appointed conference committee to prioritize prevention, treatment, and 
recovery programs for folks suffering from prescription opioid or 
heroin addiction, but all of the good legislation that we worked on so 
hard this past week in the House is close to futile without appropriate 
Federal funding.
  It is all too easy for us to say we support helping folks who suffer 
from addiction to get the treatment and resources they so desperately 
need or to support community programs that spread awareness about the 
dangers of prescription drug use or to instruct and support medical 
professionals about the risks of opioid addiction, but it is time for 
us to put our money where our mouth is.
  This year, the President requested that we appropriate $1.1 billion 
to help the American people to prevent and treat addiction. It is time 
for us to act on that request. It is not enough to adopt important 
policies that we have this week on prevention and on treatment; we need 
funding.
  We must provide adequate Federal funding to prevent addiction from 
occurring in the first place by expanding our prescription drug 
overdose prevention strategies. We must provide adequate Federal 
funding to help save the lives of those who have intentionally or 
accidentally overdosed by improving access to the overdose reversal 
drug naloxone and support targeted enforcement. And we must help our 
local law enforcement by supporting targeted enforcement activities.
  Families across my district in Connecticut and across this great 
Nation are reaching out to our offices asking for support and help, 
asking us to come together and to address this public health crisis.
  Recently, I was contacted by a family from my hometown about a young 
woman who was a classmate of one of my three children. They have lost 
track of this young woman. She has fallen into the grips of addiction 
and has disappeared for years from her family. They are trying to seek 
her out, find her, and get her treatment.
  We were successful in finding her in a court. We were successful in 
getting her a bed. Sadly, she turned down treatment at this time. That 
is the story of what addiction does to families. We are hopeful that 
she will heed the voices of her family, that she will come back in and 
get treatment.
  But that is also why prevention matters. Because it is so hard to 
treat addiction, we need to do everything we can to prevent folks from 
getting addicted in the first place.
  That is why some of the provisions I included in this bill are so 
important:

[[Page H2375]]

to make sure the public understands the risk of prescription drug 
addiction, to make sure that our medical professionals get continuing 
medical education to understand their responsibility to look out for 
their patients, to seek out alternative pain management strategies, and 
to understand those risks.
  The sad truth is we don't have enough treatment beds. The sad truth 
is we don't have dissemination of best practices. The sad truth is we 
don't have the funding right now to address this crisis in the way that 
the American people want and need us to do.
  So let's work together. Let's work together to prevent our children, 
our families, and our friends from being so poisoned by this addiction 
on our streets. We can't do it without funding. It is just unfair. Not 
just unwise, it is unfair to claim credit for solving a problem and 
addressing it without the funds that need to go there.
  So let's work together to provide funding. In our conference with the 
Senate, let's seek to put the resources there to back the wonderful 
policies that we adopted this week in this House.
  So, again, I urge my colleagues to support this motion to instruct 
our conferees.
  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mrs. BROOKS of Indiana. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the 
gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Messer).
  Mr. MESSER. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague, my good 
friend, the gentlewoman from Indiana, for her important work on this 
legislation.
  I rise in support today of S. 524.
  Mr. Speaker, an astounding 78 people die every day of opioid overdose 
in America--78 people each day, 78 families crushed in the wake of this 
epidemic. And that will continue to leave devastation in its path 
unless we act.

                              {time}  1200

  Austin, a city in my district, is all too aware of opioid addiction's 
devastating consequences. It has become the epicenter of an HIV 
outbreak connected to opioid addiction.
  The community of Austin is rallying to that crisis, but Hoosiers 
aren't the only ones suffering. That is why this week we came together 
as a House to pass 18 bills to tackle this epidemic, including the bill 
we are debating right now.
  These bills are an important first step. We must continue to work 
together to end this devastation and help the families crushed by this 
crisis.
  Ms. ESTY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from 
Connecticut (Mr. Himes), my friend and fellow Nutmegger.
  Mr. HIMES. Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to join my colleague from 
Connecticut (Ms. Esty) in supporting this motion to instruct because 
this is an issue that deserves not just the attention and the focus of 
the House, but it deserves a meaningful commitment of resources to 
address the problem that is plaguing every town and city in Connecticut 
and in this country.
  Mr. Speaker, this year we will see 30,000 fatalities to this opioid 
crisis. In the 20 years of the Vietnam war, from 1955 to 1975, this 
Nation suffered just shy of 60,000 fatalities in the entire Vietnam 
war. In 2 years, the opioid crisis will claim more Americans than died 
in the Vietnam war; yet, we this week--and I salute the majority for 
acting on the opioid crisis--decided to make roughly $106 million 
available to this scourge.
  For those watching at home, we didn't actually make that money 
available. In Congress, we authorize--which says, legally, you can 
spend the money--and we appropriate. Appropriate is actually when we 
take out the checkbook and write the check. And just to be clear for 
the American people, we authorized, but we did not appropriate.
  So, again, I salute the majority and I salute the bipartisan tenor 
that we have had this week in addressing this very, very serious 
problem through so many bills, but now is the time to actually put our 
money where our mouths are. The reason for this is the number I gave 
you earlier: 30,000 Americans every single year.
  I spoke earlier this week about a young man from my district named 
Alex Recupido, a 2010 graduate of Trumbull High School. He was a young 
man and was on his way to becoming a nurse.
  He had moved to Florida to pursue that career when, in 2014, he fell 
prey to a heroin overdose that, like so many of these things, started 
with the abuse of prescription opioids and moved into a heroin 
addiction and then, of course, a tragic end, as so many Americans have 
experienced. There were 415 in my small State of Connecticut.
  I had the opportunity to speak to Alex's mom this week. Like so many 
of these cases, there were any number of steps along the way where this 
horrible outcome could have been prevented. People knew that he had a 
problem, but nothing happened with treatment and recovery to stop the 
outcome of this young man dying in Florida in 2014.
  Thirty thousand is a big and abstract number, but I wish you could 
have heard Alex Recupido's mom, who has now devoted her life to working 
and advocating for us to do our jobs to commit the resources we need to 
commit to address this opioid crisis in this country.
  I wish you could have heard her. If you had heard her, we would 
probably be working through the night tonight to make sure that we 
adequately address this unbelievable problem.
  This is really about treatment and recovery. It is about training our 
first responders. And let's face it. We can use a lot of words and we 
can talk about money, but until we write the checks to help our States 
and our municipalities and our treatment organizations and recovery 
organizations to actually make a difference on the ground, we are just 
talking.
  I salute that. And I do salute the majority for devoting this week to 
these really, really important bills. But I also hope that we can do 
better than talking about $106 million and, through this motion to 
instruct, actually put the resources that we need on the table to try 
to stop those 30,000 deaths that are going to occur this year unless we 
act in a meaningful way.
  So again I salute the majority for prioritizing this week, and I 
thank my colleague, Elizabeth Esty, for offering this motion to 
instruct. I hope we can get behind it and I hope we can actually do 
something good for an awful lot of tragic outcomes that will happen 
otherwise.
  Mrs. BROOKS of Indiana. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I 
may consume.
  This legislation was crafted in collaboration with colleagues from 
both sides of the aisle and it is in the best interest of the American 
people as a whole.
  Regardless of which side of the Chamber we sit on or which State we 
represent, the number 78 has come up time and time again. Those are 78 
Americans who are dying of heroin and opioid epidemic every single day 
from communities large and small, rural, urban, from coast to coast.
  It is time we come together, as we have done this past week, on 
behalf of the millions of Americans and their families who are 
struggling with this horrible epidemic and desperately need our help.
  The Senate has acted and now the House has put forward a powerful 
bipartisan package that reflects our priorities. This will not be all 
the work we do together. So the package of bills that we have done will 
not be all that this Congress does forever.
  Together, in conference, we can enhance our collective response to 
this crisis. I look forward to resolving the issues that have been 
raised by my colleagues across the aisle with our Senate colleagues, 
and I look forward to the conference committee, where we will resolve 
so many issues on behalf of the American families and people who have 
lost loved ones to this crisis.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
  Ms. ESTY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.
  Mr. Speaker, as previous speakers have already noted, 30,000 
Americans are likely to die this year from drug overdoses.
  In the small cities in my district, like Waterbury, a town of about 
100,000 people, 38 people died last year from drug overdoses. In New 
Britain, Connecticut, it was 31 people. Each one of those individuals 
had friends and family and loved ones. Each one of those deaths was 
mourned. Each one of those deaths was an unnecessary tragedy.

[[Page H2376]]

  Our constituents send us to Washington to work together to solve 
problems, and this is the most basic and fundamental issue we deal 
with, literally, matters of life and death.
  I am pleased that my good friend, my colleague from Indiana, Susan 
Brooks, has worked so hard and that the majority has worked hard with 
the minority this week on it. But at the end of the day, our budgets 
are also our priorities.
  We have to find a way to provide the resources so that these 
wonderful programs and the good policies that we adopted this week are 
reflected and put into place to actually save lives.
  We cannot claim credit for good policies when we do not provide the 
resources to the first responders on the streets, to the substance 
abuse counselors, to the coaches who need to understand the risks for 
their young athletes, to parents to understand those risks, to our 
dentists who are doing wisdom tooth extractions. All our work is for 
naught if it is simply a bill passed that appears in lawbooks.
  Our job is not yet done. So I urge my colleagues in the strongest 
possible way to continue our good work and to put into effect the 
resources so that these policies adopted in the Senate and the House 
have the impact we all want and the American people need, which is to 
help save lives, to prevent our fellow citizens from becoming addicted 
to prescription drugs or to heroin, and to actually help them remove 
themselves from that addiction and return to life in its fullest form.
  So, again, I urge my colleagues to take these instructions and take 
this charge to heart in the meeting in the conference committee.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. All time for debate has expired.
  Without objection, the previous question is ordered on the motion to 
instruct.
  There was no objection.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on the motion to instruct.
  The question was taken; and the Speaker pro tempore announced that 
the noes appeared to have it.
  Ms. ESTY. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.
  The yeas and nays were ordered.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to clause 8 of rule XX, further 
proceedings on this question will be postponed.

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