Katherine Clark: “Again, I rise not in opposition to this amendment, but I support this effort by my colleague as well. Let's increase…”

“Again, I rise not in opposition to this amendment, but I support this effort by my colleague as well. Let's increase behavioral health integration into pediatric primary care, for I, too, have seen the shortages of mental health providers in my home State and the very real and devastating impact that that has on families. This is a false crisis. There is $5 billion that we have cut from the FY17 levels, but this false crisis has very real impacts on the lives of children and their families. Let's get to the work of negotiating a bipartisan budget to lift sequestration caps on both defense and nondefense, and draft a reasonable Labor-HHS bill that adequately funds mental health and substance abuse prevention programs. We have the opportunity and we need to seize it.”