[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 212 (Wednesday, December 8, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Pages S9007-S9008]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                PROVIDING FOR CONGRESSIONAL DISAPPROVAL

                                 ______
                                 

 UNDER CHAPTER 8 OF TITLE 5, UNITED STATES CODE, OF THE RULE SUBMITTED 
   BY THE DEPARTMENT OF LABOR RELATING TO ``COVID-19 VACCINATION AND 
                TESTING; EMERGENCY TEMPORARY STANDARD''

  Mr. BRAUN. Mr. President, I move to proceed to S.J. Res. 29.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The question is on agreeing to the 
motion.
  The motion was agreed to.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will report the motion.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

       A joint resolution (S.J. Res. 29) providing for 
     congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of title 5, United 
     States Code, of the rule submitted by the Department of Labor 
     relating to ``COVID-19 Vaccination and Testing; Emergency 
     Temporary Standard''.

  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Under the provisions of 5, United 
States Code 802, there will now be up to 10 hours of debate, equally 
divided.
  Mr. RUBIO. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Senator 
Cassidy be allowed to complete his remarks before the next scheduled 
vote.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. RUBIO. 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. CASSIDY. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum 
call be rescinded.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection.


                            Opioid Epidemic

  Mr. CASSIDY. Mr. President, we have a crisis here in the United 
States, which we cannot keep ignoring. After the pandemic hit, we took 
our eyes off the issue of opioid and other drug overdoses.
  We have made tremendous progress over the previous 4 years. The Trump 
Administration made it a priority. Congress has made it a priority. We 
have funded multiple programs, and we have seen that the incidence rate 
of drug overdose was decreasing and for opioids in particular.
  But with the lockdown and the personal stress this led to, we have 
seen an uptick once more in these opioid deaths. From April 2020 to 
April 2021, we saw over 100,000 overdoses linked to opioids and other 
overdoses beyond that, and fentanyl causing 64 percent of them.
  Now, we talk about statistics, but we sometimes, in those statistics, 
lose the human dimension. I remember a 911 call I once heard, and in it 
there was a frantic woman calling because her husband was overdosed: 
Please come help. And that is tragic, but you almost become used to it. 
What brought tears to your eyes was that in the background you heard 
the baby crying.
  Now, it is easy to imagine, one, what that child's life is now--the 
child of an addict--but it is also easy to imagine what the child's 
future is with a single parent having to deal with the death of a 
father and all that means.
  It is not just the opioid death. It is the opioid family that has to 
bear the burden of the loss: first, to addiction and then, secondly, to 
death.
  Now, there is a unique role here for the country of China. We don't 
know that it is the Chinese Government, but we certainly know it is the 
country of China.
  Fentanyl is a synthetic poison that is taking the lives of so many of 
these who die from opioid addiction--certainly true in my State, 
Louisiana. The country of China's role in this opioid crisis is by 
providing the chemicals to the Mexican and South American cartels, 
which take those raw chemicals and make them into the fentanyl that 
then comes into our country. And this is what is causing the addiction.
  Now, by the way, opioid addiction is incredibly powerful. In another 
story from when I was a practicing physician, in the emergency room, at 
3 in the morning, where the grandmother was there with the addict 
daughter, and the child--grandchild of the grandmother, child of the 
addict--was crying because the grandmother was taking the child away 
from his mother. The mother didn't care. And it struck me that if 
something is so powerful to disrupt the relationship between a mother 
and her child, the power of that cannot be ignored.
  So when we look at these drugs that people are addicted to, we have 
to understand the hold they have upon their physiology, their emotional 
life, their psychology--in a sum, their whole life.
  So what can we do? We can't just give up. We have to make a pushback 
for the sake of those who are in addiction and the family members that 
they have. So we need to modernize our customs process. I have a 
Customs Modernization Act, which will crack down on the illicit trade, 
if you will, the way that the cartels are financing and moving drugs 
across the border. If we can address that, we can address the supply, 
and we can decrease the number of people who have access to these 
drugs.
  Today, I introduce the HALT Fentanyl Act to make permanent the 
temporary schedule I of fentanyl analogs. What this means is that in an 
effort to evade our laws, the cartels will make some little analog--
just a little bit different from regular fentanyl, which is regulated--
but, nonetheless, has the addictive potential and the ability to kill 
of regular fentanyl. And this will allow us to combat the criminals and 
to hold the companies in China responsible.
  The next thing we have to do is start by closing down our southern 
border. It is not just the migrants who are coming across but tens of 
thousands of pounds of drugs. We are now seizing more fentanyl and meth 
than we ever have before. Even the DEA Administrator, Anne Milgram, 
agrees that drugs flowing across the border are fueling the opioid 
crisis.
  She said this on national TV: ``The real problem are the criminal 
drug networks in Mexico.'' She says fentanyl and meth are being ``mass 
produced in Mexico,'' sourcing chemicals mostly coming from China, and 
they are ``driving the overdose deaths''.
  We have a responsibility to our fellow Americans. Perhaps I feel it 
more acutely as a physician who has been with those patients and their 
families who are fighting addiction, but we should all feel the pain of 
that child crying as her mother was calling for 911 to come assist the 
father who had stopped breathing from an overdose. So let us redouble 
our efforts and hope others will join on both the Customs Modernization 
Act and the HALT

[[Page S9008]]

Fentanyl Act in order to, in one more way, protect Americans from the 
deadly scourge of these drugs coming from China, through Mexico, across 
our border and, unfortunately, into the bodies of those who are dying.
  I yield the floor.

                          ____________________