[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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