Cory Booker: “In reserving the right to object, this is why I am down here today--really, literally, at this point--and I want to jump…”

“In reserving the right to object, this is why I am down here today--really, literally, at this point--and I want to jump here. I thank the Presiding Officer for recognizing me. I truly appreciate that, but this gets me excited because this is the point that I want to illustrate. My colleague is far smarter than I on medical issues. I could not have passed organic chem at Stanford. I am sure he passed it with flying colors. Of my colleague, who is truly one of my more favorite colleagues in this place because of how rational and pragmatic he is on approaching real crises like this, I am begging and hoping he will listen to me, and I am begging this body to listen to me. We have had a fentanyl crisis in this country of monumental proportions. It is one of the greatest killers in America. Fentanyl and fentanyl analogues have literally been responsible for lowering the life expectancy for Americans. It is one of the greatest crises we have seen to human life in America in my lifetime. There is so much data- driven evidence and evidence-based answers to this, of how we can approach this crisis, but yet the only bill that we seek to do is a bill that does what we have already done on a temporary basis. I support classwide scheduling for fentanyl analogues, but here we have this bill, the HALT bill, that my colleague pointed out did pass in a bipartisan way and now is in the Judiciary Committee.…”