I want to play back on what my colleague and good friend Bobby Rush from Illinois was talking about, was the disparity of income when people were facing this.

We have suffered irreparable harm, and I keep repeating it in this committee meeting.

Come and visit the State of West Virginia. No joblessness? We have lost over 20,000 jobs in the coal mining industry.

I do appreciate the opportunity to testify about my bipartisan bill, the Promoting Responsible Opioid Prescribing Act, or the PROP Act.

I just want to say that after listening to both my colleagues, who are passionate about this issue, they are both right. They are both right. If we had a tax plan--a competitive tax plan--that took care of our priorities based on our…

we have come to a crisis point in our country. In 2014, 18,893 people died due to a prescription opioid overdose. On average, 51 people die every day. What we are talking about is legal prescription drugs that are basically produced by…

let me first of all say thanks to my dear friend Senator Casey from Pennsylvania. If you don't come from a coal-mining region or a coal-mining State, you probably don't understand the culture of coal mining, the people who do this work…

Why is there such a disparity between two regions separated by merely a thousand feet?

This is something we hear from providers time and time again.

I don't want to do it for everyone, as that penalizes everyone.

We want this to be seamless for the veteran. It ought to be about what is the right thing for veterans and taxpayers.

It cannot be used in a rating system, because an addict is not going to give you a good rating if they do not get what they want.

The reason I am saying this is the feedback I received from that gave us the impetus to move on legislation.

I want to say one thing on the opiates.

I want the record to be very clear that I did not refer to my good friend from Nevada as an SOB.

Can we make sure that each veteran knows that they come first?

I rise, as I have for the past few weeks, to bring stories of the opiate crisis that we have throughout my State, the Presiding Officer's State of North Carolina, and all over this country. This epidemic is something we have to face…

first of all, I thank my good friend from New Hampshire, Senator Shaheen, for putting in this most needed funding to fight this epidemic, and I thank Senator King from Maine as well. We are all fighting it. My State has been hit the…