Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I rise today to oppose the previous question so that we can immediately consider H.R. 6184, the HALT Fentanyl Act. Before I begin, I have to address something that was said just now. I am the wife of a first responder. My husband sees these overdoses every single day. In my community, in just this year, we have apprehended bricks of fentanyl stamped with border cartels' stamps on them. We know it is coming from the border. We know it is being trafficked across, both in trucks at ports of entry but also illegally. We know this to be a fact, and if we do not secure the border this will continue to happen. I will say, as the wife of a first responder, someone whose husband has continually responded to these calls and is reviving people who have been poisoned by fentanyl, it is not a matter of if he, himself, overdoses, it is when. And that is going to be a very bad day because I think that Members of this Chamber need to be held responsible for the open border policies that this administration continues to allow. But I digress. Mr. Speaker, 108,000. That is the number of Americans who died from drug overdoses last year. Of those, more than 80,000 were connected to opioids. The lion's share of those opioid deaths were linked to fentanyl. Now, it is important that we remember that these numbers are actually people. They are mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, sons, daughters, aunts, uncles. They are people. Not statistics. They are humans.…”