Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I say to my colleagues on the Energy and Commerce Committee on both sides of the aisle, thanks for your great work on this bill. My colleague, Congresswoman Blackburn from Tennessee, this is an issue she has worked on for a long time--we will just say a long time--with great passion and great diligence. We had the subcommittee chair of the Health Subcommittee, Dr. Burgess, go up to the facility in New Jersey recently and observe firsthand what happens, what transpires there. My colleague, Mr. Green, and others have talked about the number of packages that go through the facility versus the number that are actually inspected. Then, I know we have all had pretty good conversations with Dr. Scott Gottlieb, the now-Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, and he has done marvelous work with the limited tools that he has to really ramp up their ability to try to stop these shipments of illegal fentanyl. For those here in the Chamber, you have to understand illegal fentanyl. If you took a salt shaker and put, I don't know, half a dozen grains of salt on this podium and put your finger on it, it would likely go through your skin and you would pass out and die, unless my colleague from Texas or Tennessee here, or the House Physician, had some naloxone they could come and revive you. It is that potent; it is that dangerous; it is that deadly; and that is what is getting cut into heroin.…”