[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 162 (2016), Part 11]
[Senate]
[Pages 14739-14741]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                        21ST CENTURY CURES BILL

  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, we are winding down the final days of the 
114th Congress, and some of the work we have been engaged in is coming 
to fruition.
  I spoke to the chairman of the Environment and Public Works 
Committee, who told me he thought the WRDA bill--the water resources 
development bill--was coming together and would likely be voted on in 
the House tomorrow.
  I believe that Senator McCain and Chairman Thornberry in the House--
the Armed Services Committee--have a national defense authorization 
bill that on Friday will be voted on in the House and then will be 
coming over here to the Senate.
  We know that we have to, by the December 9 deadline, pass an 
appropriations bill that will keep the lights on for the Federal 
Government for an undetermined, at this point, period of time, probably 
sometime into next spring, when we will have a new President and a new 
administration.
  This afternoon in the House, they are going to be voting on another 
important piece of legislation that I wanted to talk about briefly. It 
is called the 21st Century Cures Act. This has been a product of a lot 
of methodical and very deliberate hard work on both sides of the aisle 
in both Chambers, and it will make a big difference in the lives of 
Americans because it will help make our country healthier and stronger.
  As its name suggests, it will help develop medical treatments and 
cures for some of the most tragic health problems facing families 
today. Recently, I was at the 75th anniversary celebration at the MD 
Anderson hospital in Houston, TX, and it is the premier cancer facility 
in the country. Some time ago, the hospital started their own MD 
Anderson Moon Shots Program and is doing all that it can do to study 
and research various forms of cancer with the goal to eliminate cancer 
as a public health threat. Of course, we know that Vice President 
Biden, who was part of that 75th anniversary celebration at MD Anderson 
in Houston, and this administration have their own Cancer Moonshot 
Program to help eliminate cancer, and that will also be part of this 
21st Century Cures bill. The whole idea of the Moonshot, even to the 
current generation, reminds us that at one time we thought putting a 
man on the Moon was impossible, outside the

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realm of possibility, but because of a vision and because of a 
commitment and a desire to push the bounds of our capabilities, they 
persevered and we found a way. MD Anderson's Moon Shots Program serves 
as another example of American ingenuity, ambition, and dogged 
determination to make the lives of our families and the future 
generations better than our own.
  Fortunately, as I said, this Cures bill the House will be voting on 
today, which we will vote on next week, will provide funding for cancer 
and Alzheimer's research, among other terrible diseases, so that the 
best medical community in the world can help make great strides in 
fighting them.
  This legislation will also fund the battle against opioid abuse, 
prescription drug abuse--something we have discussed a lot here on the 
floor during the last year because of the devastation that it has 
brought about in many parts of the country. Of course, we know that 
when the opioids aren't available, cheap heroin imported into the 
United States from south of our border is part of that scourge as well.
  Overdoses and the abuse of opioid drugs are tearing families apart. 
This bill will provide additional grant funding to States to combat it 
and to help people who are already in the grips of this terrible 
addiction to find a way to freedom.
  I am particularly glad that this legislation includes bipartisan 
mental health reforms that I introduced in this Chamber last year, 
known as the Mental Health and Safe Communities Act. I want to express 
my gratitude to Senator Alexander, Senator Murray, and others on a 
bipartisan basis and bicameral basis for working with us to make sure 
we include mental health reform as a component of the 21st Century 
Cures legislation.
  We all know that mental health problems are something that American 
families have to deal with. I dare say there is probably not a family 
in America that doesn't have to deal with this in some way or another--
either at work, with people you go to church with, or with people you 
live next door to. In some way or another, mental health problems are 
rampant.
  A lot of that has to do with well-intended but unintended 
consequences of deinstitutionalization of our mentally ill back in the 
1990s. The idea was that it was not appropriate to institutionalize 
people with mental illness, and so we ought to deinstitutionalize them. 
But we contemplated that there would be some sort of safety net after 
they went back to their communities where they could get treatment and 
where they would get the care they needed. Unfortunately, what has 
happened and what my legislation is designed to address is that our 
jails have become the de facto default mental health treatment 
facilities in this country.
  I recently was at a meeting of a large county sheriffs association in 
Washington, DC, and a friend of mine, the current sheriff of Bexar 
County, TX, Sheriff Pamerleau, said: How would you like to meet the 
largest mental health provider in America? I said: Well, sure.
  She walked across the floor and introduced me to the sheriff of Los 
Angeles County, who runs the Los Angeles County jails. You get my 
point. We are warehousing people in jails and other places and not 
giving them the treatment they need in order to get their basic 
underlying problem taken care of. Of course, people with untreated 
mental illness frequently engage in petty crimes--trespassing and other 
things--which end them up in jail. But if they don't get treated, they 
are going to stay in that turnstile and keep coming back.
  We all know the problem of homelessness in our streets. You walk down 
the street in Washington, DC, or any city in the country--such as 
Austin, TX--and you see people who have obvious symptoms of mental 
illness who are not being treated. What this legislation does is to 
provide a pathway to treatment, primarily by using preexisting 
appropriations to make grants to our States and local communities so 
they can deal with these using the very best practices in the country. 
For example, the Federal Government already spends about $2 billion a 
year on grants to State and local law enforcement. Doesn't it make 
sense to prioritize dealing with these mental health problems and 
particularly with the best practices in places such as San Antonio, TX, 
where the mental health community and law enforcement and other leaders 
have come together to try to come up with a program to divert people 
with mental illness to treatment and to provide additional training to 
law enforcement, to deescalate some of the conflicts that occur--for 
example, when the police show up and confront somebody with obvious 
mental illness. If the police don't get the kind of training they need, 
then that could end up in a tragedy, either for the person being 
arrested or for the police officers.
  It is really important that we deal with this in a sensible way, and 
this legislation helps to do that--again, using some of that $2 billion 
in grant funding we give to State and local law enforcement but 
prioritizing and authorizing some of the very best practices occurring 
in communities around the country so that more people can benefit from 
these programs.
  This also provides families additional tools. For example, if you 
have a family member who is suffering from severe mental illness--let's 
say they are an adult--there is not a whole lot you can do about it if 
they refuse to seek treatment or comply with their doctor's orders. 
There is a means--a very difficult means--for temporary 
institutionalization. For example, you have to get a doctor's order and 
then go to court and get somebody put in a State hospital or an 
institution, but they are not there forever. They may be there for 30 
days or so, until their symptoms abate because they are complying with 
their doctor's orders and taking their medication.
  The great news in mental health treatment is there are a lot of 
miraculous treatments, and if the person afflicted with mental illness 
will comply with their doctor's orders and take their medication, they 
can lead relatively normal and productive lives. But the great problem 
is that so often people refuse to take their medication. They start 
feeling better. They quit, and they become sicker and sicker, until 
they become a danger both to themselves and the community.
  One of the things this legislation does is to provide an additional 
procedure, called assisted outpatient treatment, which gives local 
courts and civil courts the authority to consider a petition whereby a 
family member can come in and say: My son, my daughter, my husband, my 
relative is having serious problems with their mental illness and they 
are noncompliant with their treatments. Judge, will you please enter an 
order, which essentially is like probation, saying that periodically 
you have to come back and report to the court on your compliance with 
the order, but part of that is to follow your doctor's orders and to 
take your medication. I am not saying it is a panacea, but it provides 
family members another tool when their loved ones become mentally ill 
and when there are no good options for the family members to assure 
that they will get the treatment or remain compliant with their 
doctor's orders by taking their medication.
  I applaud the House for taking up these critical reforms. I know 
Congressman Tim Murphy has worked on this long and hard in the House. 
There are a lot of other people who have worked on this mental health 
reform. In this Chamber, Senator Bill Cassidy has been a champion and 
Chris Murphy, among others. Really, the persons who have gotten us this 
far--there are two of them--are Senator Alexander and Senator Murray, 
the chairman and the ranking member of the HELP Committee. But it has 
taken a bipartisan, bicameral effort to try to get us to this point, 
and I am glad that we will be voting on this next week, after the House 
passes it today.
  With that, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Sullivan). The Senator from Oregon.

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