Glenn Thompson: “I appreciate the gentlewoman's leadership on this. The fact that we had two great hearings, which were on top of a lot…”

“I appreciate the gentlewoman's leadership on this. The fact that we had two great hearings, which were on top of a lot of the work that we have been doing as a Congress, this really is an all-hands-on-deck public health crisis, and we know that because of the work that we are doing in Education and the Workforce. This transcends education. It impacts the workforce in a significant way at a time when we have an estimated somewhere between 5 and 6 million jobs available in this country; and we have increasing job growth, and we have an aging workforce which is retiring, a significant number each and every year. This is an issue that impacts our national security because it takes individuals out of the workforce not able to pass that drug test, not able to be able to qualify. This is obviously an all-hands-on-deck because we see so many different committees and their members across both sides of the aisle who have been working on this, the amount of legislation going back. One of the more memorable ones is the CARA Act, the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act, that was like 16 individual bills--16 or 18, I don't remember exactly how many--that we debated on this floor and we passed on this floor. We rolled it into one package, and it was actually passed by the Senate, and the President signed it.…”