Political Quotes

“Mr. Chair, SAMHSA's stated mission is to lead public health and service delivery efforts that promote mental health, prevent substance misuse, and provide treatments and supports to foster recovery while ensuring access to better outcomes for all. It is not an exaggeration to say that the public servants at SAMHSA work every day to prevent overdoses and suicides and save lives. As a longtime champion for behavioral health parity and access to treatment and as co-chair of the Congressional Addiction, Treatment, and Recovery Caucus, bipartisan in nature, there have been a few questions on my mind. For instance, how many public servants need to be fired at SAMHSA before we say enough? How many suicide prevention trainings need to be canceled before Republicans can speak out? How many lifesaving naloxone trainings need to be canceled for Republicans to say anything? How many lives need to be lost before Republicans tell the Trump administration to stop the decimation of SAMHSA? I have other questions, too. They are simple ones like: How many people work at SAMHSA currently? What divisions have no staff left at all? What programs have they had to cut in local communities? In February, following the firing of probationary employees, I started asking these questions. Since the firing of nearly 50 percent of SAMHSA's staff, I have continued asking those questions. To date, I have gotten zero answers--zero.”