Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. Mr. Speaker, I oppose this rule. This week the House is considering dozens of bills to combat the opioid epidemic. These are small bipartisan bills that we all support, but they are simply not enough. Our country is in the midst of the greatest public health emergency in decades. We have all heard the grim statistics, so I won't repeat them, yet none of the bills that we are considering this week provide the dedicated and sustained resources we need to combat this crisis. President Trump's own Council of Economic Advisers found that the opioid crisis likely cost our Nation more than $500 billion in just 1 year. We cannot just nibble around the edges. We cannot just rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic. We must treat the opioid epidemic like the true public health emergency that it is. I offered an amendment that could have changed this, but the House is not being allowed to consider it. Earlier this year, I introduced the CARE Act, with Senator Elizabeth Warren, modeled directly on the highly successful Ryan White Act, which the Congress passed with bipartisan support in 1990 to address the AIDS crisis.…”