Political Quotes

“Mr. Chair, I want to speak on this amendment, which provides some additional funding for assisted outpatient treatment. The underlying bill has in it $15 million, and we are asking for it to be raised to $20 million. First of all, I want to say where the money is coming from. This is within the budget of SAMHSA. This is not new spending. It is not additional spending. But over my years of investigating mental health in the United States and the conditions, and then led to my introduction of the Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act, which, by the way, this House passed 442-2, this level of funding was authorized in the bill. It is already authorized there. It is to come from the SAMHSA account, not new spending. Let me describe what assisted outpatient treatment is. Understanding that there are about 60 million Americans with mental illness, and 10 million have severe mental illness, it is important to note that our prisons are filled with people who have mental illness. On some level, 60 to 80 percent of people in jail have a mental illness. That is no place to be treating someone. But, unfortunately, they may have a crime they committed, and in many cases it could simply be vagrancy, it could be other issues, too, where they may have become violent, they may have had other problems associated with that, but a person with mental illness is 10 times more likely to be in prison than to be in a hospital bed. We don't have enough hospital beds.…”