Political Quotes

“I thank my friend from Wisconsin for his leadership on this very important piece of legislation, and the chairman and ranking member of the Judiciary Committee for working together to bring it to the floor today. The United States is being ravaged by skyrocketing levels of prescription opioid and heroin abuse. This brutal epidemic accounted for more than 28,000 American deaths in 2014. It is destroying families and devastating our local communities. Tragically, our Nation's veteran population has been particularly hard-hit by this crisis. Veterans suffer significantly higher rates of opioid abuse than their civilian counterparts. And according to some estimates, the number of opioid use disorders among veterans has increased 55 percent in the past 5 years. Worst of all, the death rate from opioid overdose among veterans is nearly double the national average. Clearly our veteran population has a unique set of needs when it comes to dealing with addiction that must be addressed through specialized programming. We need meaningful and evidence-based solutions, including treatment for co-occurring illnesses, such as depression and PTSD. I have been working to help develop those solutions as part of the Bipartisan Task Force to Combat the Heroin Epidemic and by holding a series of roundtables with stakeholders in my district. I strongly believe that the legislation we are considering here today is another step forward in that process.…”