Rob Portman: “I am here on the floor tonight to talk about the growing epidemic of drug addiction and the issue that is occurring in…”

“I am here on the floor tonight to talk about the growing epidemic of drug addiction and the issue that is occurring in my home State of Ohio and, really, all the States represented here in this Chamber and how we need to redouble our efforts. It is a heartbreaking story because we were making so much progress prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, but, now, underneath the pandemic, we have this epidemic that is growing. But before I get into that, I must talk first about what is going on this evening in the U.S. House of Representatives. Almost 3 months ago, at the beginning of August, we passed in this Chamber bipartisan legislation to finally address our infrastructure shortfalls in this country. Presidents of both parties had been proposing it for many years. Congress had talked about it a lot, but we had never been able to figure out a way forward. So a group of 10 Republicans and 10 Democrats got together and said: We are going to grow this from the middle out and figure out how to address our infrastructure challenges and do so in a bipartisan way. We did that. The President of the United States, President Biden, supported our effort, and we were able to get that legislation across the floor here in the U.S. Senate--not without some challenges and some changes and modifications.…”