I, too, rise this evening to discuss the vacancy on the Supreme Court and the need for the Senate to do its job and give fair consideration to any nominee made by President Obama to fill this seat on the Supreme Court. Many of my…

Sometimes it is you spend a buck on high-quality early learning and you get back multiples of that, sometimes into the teens.

Research demonstrates that direct investments in children can help close gaps in these important outcomes and can have lasting positive effects.

Whenever a witness can bring a personal story, that makes a substantial impression on everyone here.

I rise today, as I have every year since I came to the Senate, in commemoration of Black History Month, to recognize an individual who has made a considerable contribution to society and the African-American community. Today, we honor the…

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Dr. King, welcome, and thank you for your testimony and your willingness to serve. We appreciate that commitment.

We appreciate that, because I know--I say this as a former State auditor general, where we would have audit findings and make a long series of recommendations, and you wonder if the State agency would be responsive.

I think that word has acquired much more powerful meaning now as applied to these drugs.

Every State, every community has some metric or some horror story.

I hope that we can support the President's supplemental in a bipartisan way.

We face a continually evolving public health situation.

I guess as a followup to that, what are the standards that you use to determine whether to require pediatric testing and labeling for medical countermeasures that would be used in children?

I voted against the nominee for FDA Commissioner precisely because I think the FDA has failed in its mission.

Senator Burr and I have worked together on public health preparedness issues for several years now.

I recently held a listening session with key addiction treatment stakeholders in New Jersey to address this growing crisis.

I am also a cosponsor of several pieces of legislation that would move us in the right direction.

I applaud Senators Toomey and Portman for their leadership on this legislation, and I hope we can move it very soon.

I appreciate the efforts that Chairman Hatch and Ranking Member Wyden have put into developing this legislation.

a referral to a wait list, to me, is probably a pathway to heroin if that wait list is awfully long.

Let me conclude by saying that the opioid epidemic is a complex problem that needs a multifaceted solution.

Senators Toomey and Portman have a very thoughtful bipartisan bill with Senators Casey and Brown that would provide Medicare with an important tool in the fight against opioid abuse.

Senator Wyden and I have been working together on bipartisan legislation that would provide the States the flexibility to use Federal child welfare funds to address issues of substance abuse and other risk factors.

I compliment Senator Portman for his work on that, and others with him.

Deaths associated with opioids have quadrupled over the last 12 years to an astounding 78 deaths a day.

Access to cheap, highly potent heroin on the streets has become, by comparison, very cheap and easy.