Floor Statements

Mr. President, today the U.S. Senate is going to vote on legislation that is representative of years of work that has been done to help address the opioid crisis. That vote will occur in about half an hour.

This is historic legislation. It is legislation that was put together by the House and Senate, on a bipartisan basis, to answer some of the pleas and calls from our communities back home--pleas from people asking: Can't you do more to help us reverse the tide of this opioid epidemic?

I would like to start by thanking and commending Senator Lamar Alexander for putting together this legislation, taking the work from five different committees of Congress--the HELP Committee, Judiciary, Finance, Banking, the Commerce Committee--putting those different legislative projects together, along with projects that had come over from the House. Seventy Members of this body have contributed to this legislation.

This legislation is important because although Congress acted a couple years ago, unfortunately, the problem has gotten worse, not better, and we have learned more. The last major legislation we passed on opioid legislation was about 2 years ago. By the way, during those 2 years, I am told I have been

on this floor 56 times talking about this issue. I have been talking about how the legislation we passed is working or not working, talking about stories from back home, talking about the need to implement the legislation we passed in a more expeditious way because of this problem, talking about the urgency, and talking about having the necessary funding.

Here is the good news: We have increased funding dramatically. The two bills we passed in 2016 are beginning to work. One is called the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act that I coauthored with Senator Whitehouse; the other is called the Cures legislation. Both of them helped. CARA has grants that go directly to nonprofits, to programs that work that are evidence-based, to help with prevention and education, treatment, and longer term recovery, and to help our first responders.

The second one, the Cures legislation, gives grants that are going directly to the States from the Federal Government and then back to the programs States think work best for them. These funds, which are unprecedented, along with these two laws, are helping. They are helping to make the Federal Government a better partner with State and local government and with nonprofits to combat this crisis.

I have been all over my State to see how these programs are working, and I have spoken on the floor a lot about the people I have met who have been helped. I have spoken about some of the cases of hope--cases where somebody who stepped forward to take advantage of one of these programs and found the treatment that worked for him or her.

I have also talked about the need for us to do more. That is why earlier this year--again on a bipartisan basis--we introduced CARA 2.0--the Comprehensive Addiction Recovery Act 2.0--to learn from what we are seeing back home, what is working or not working with the first legislation and to move it forward.

The legislation we are about to vote on this afternoon includes a number of provisions of CARA 2.0, and I appreciate that. Again, I thank my colleagues for including those and the leadership for bringing this to the floor.

It also, though, includes some other legislation I think is really important. Unfortunately, again, we have to do it. Seventy-two thousand--that is the number of Americans who died from opioid and other drug overdoses last year. In 1 year, more people have died from opioid and other drug overdoses than in the entire Vietnam war.

Opioids was the No. 1 cause of death. Within opioids, the No. 1 cause of death was fentanyl, the synthetic form of opioids. Even though we have made progress with the legislation I am talking about, we have this record level of overdose deaths in my home State and in our country. I believe one reason for that is that despite doing a better job on prevention and treatment and longer term recovery, we have had this influx of a new deadly drug. This is the fentanyl influx. It comes mostly from China. It comes mostly through our Postal Service. It is the No. 1 killer right now in my State and probably the No. 1 killer in the country in terms of drugs.

In Ohio, there has been a 4,000-percent increase in the last 5 years in fentanyl overdoses and deaths. It is inexpensive. It is cheap. It is deadly. It is 50 times more powerful than heroin; a few specs can kill you. Because it is synthetic, there seems to be a limitless supply. We need to push back.

One thing this legislation before us today does is it says we are going to stop having our Postal Service be the conduit for this poison coming into our communities. It is about time. The legislation is very simple. It says this loophole where you can send this deadly poison through the mail system is going to be closed because we are going to say that now the post office has to provide law enforcement the information, in advance, electronically, that all the other private carriers already have to provide.

We spent 2 years investigating this. One thing we found in our Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations was the dealers--the traffickers--were saying: If you send it through the Postal Service, delivery is guaranteed because they don't have the screening at the Postal Service.

The STOP Act is important. It will serve as a tourniquet, stemming the flow of this deadly poison that has led to record-level overdose deaths and endangers anyone--including first responders and mail carriers--who comes in contact with it. This is important because it pushes back on the supply, but that is not all we have to do.

We have to do a better job in terms of getting people into treatment to be able to overcome their addiction. This legislation we are about to vote on does that as well. It includes a bipartisan proposal I introduced with a group of colleagues to expand Americans' access to treatment by lifting what is called the IMD, or Institutions for Mental Disease, exclusion.

This is how it works. It is an outdated policy. It is a vestige of a policy from years ago to try to discourage institutional care, which was well-meaning at the time. But this is what it does today: It says that in a residential treatment setting--and some of them are doing a great job--you are limited to 16 beds if you want Medicaid reimbursement.

One of the most heartbreaking things I do as a Senator is talk to families, parents, and loved ones of people who overdosed and died after they wanted to get into treatment but were turned away and told there was no more room for them. I have talked to a father and a mother whose daughter went to treatment. Finally, she was ready. They turned her away because there wasn't room. In the 2 weeks while she was on the waiting list, what happened? She used heroin, she overdosed, and she died. She was ready, but they weren't ready for her. This legislation will help prevent that and will allow more people who are ready to overcome their addiction get into a treatment center and get a form of medication-assisted treatment that is right for them.

Significantly, the final version that we will vote on today, agreed to by the House and Senate, is an improvement from the House-passed legislation because it now is covering any kind of substance abuse, not just opioids, not just cocaine, not just crystal meth, not just alcohol but any kind of substance abuse. That is very important. All of them are problems in our communities. Crystal meth has increased in a lot of areas of Ohio, even as we have made progress against opioids, as an example.

This legislation will also ensure that once people get into treatment, it is up to the high standards and the standards of best care that we all want. It includes several provisions I have been working on to do just that. One is national quality standards and best practices for recovery housing, so people who are transitioning out of treatment and into longer term recovery have high-quality housing options that eliminate the gaps that so often occur in recovery.

It also helps young people struggling with addiction by authorizing support programs in high schools and colleges--we have some great examples of this in Ohio, spreading around the country--to focus on people who are already addicted but also to act as further encouragement for people who want to come and learn more about this for prevention and education.

It will help provide resources and care for some of the most vulnerable affected by this crisis. There is $60 million in this legislation for a plan of care for babies who are born dependent on drugs. These babies have what is called neonatal abstinence syndrome because their mom was addicted and was using while they were in the womb. They come out needing to go through withdrawal themselves. They need more help. We don't know what the impact is going to be longer term, but we know our hospitals across the country are being filled with innocent babies who need our help.

It has the CRIB Act included in this legislation, a bipartisan bill I coauthored that will help newborns suffering from addiction recover in the best setting possible for them and allows, again, reimbursement for great organizations, such as Brigid's Path back home in Dayton, OH, where people come and provide care to kids whose parents are addicted. They aren't in foster care yet, but they need this care and transition to be able to ensure their longer term success.

Finally, it reauthorizes some really important programs: drug courts,

which are working to get people who are incarcerated into treatment; drug-free community prevention grants, which are helping to push back in our high schools and middle schools and even elementary schools; high-intensity drug trafficking areas, HIDTA grants, which focus on the Federal Government working more with State and local government on drug interdiction.

This opioid epidemic has gripped my State of Ohio. We are among the States hardest hit. But every State in this Chamber has been hit, and it is personal. It is personal for all of us because we have all heard the stories.

On Monday, before I came here to vote in this Chamber, I went to the funeral of a young man whose family I have known my entire life. His mom, whom I have known since I was born, was heartbroken, talking about his opioid addiction and talking about everything they tried to do to get over this. We talked about it as a disease, which it is. This young man's life was cut way too short. I shared in their heartbreak, mourning his beautiful life cut short by addiction.

I am tired of reading about tragedies like this in the news, hearing about it from friends and families, and watching the devastation caused by opioids across my State. We need to do more to turn this tide, and I believe this legislation will help.

In the midst of this opioid epidemic, we have to do more to cut off the supply of these deadly drugs. That is done here. We need to do more to close the gaps that occur in treatment. That is part of this. We need to do more to catch those who fall through the cracks and help those gripped by addiction get into treatment, get over their addiction, and get on to lives of meaning and purpose--a life with purpose.

To those I represent who are struggling with addiction, to those who have friends or loved ones who have struggled or continue to struggle with addiction, and to the millions of people in communities across this country who have been crippled by this crisis, this legislation is a turning point and a glimmer of hope. It is a glimmer of hope at the end of a dark tunnel. It will not solve all of the problems. Ultimately, those are going to come from our communities, from our families, from within our own hearts. But this legislation will help by allowing law enforcement to stop the flow of these deadly drugs, allowing people ready to turn their lives around to get treatment and support, and allowing our communities to begin to heal.

I urge all of my colleagues to support this legislation this afternoon.

I yield back my time.

Mr. President, I agree with Senator Durbin. First, I would like to also voice my appreciation for the hard work that our colleagues in both the House and Senate put into the SUPPORT for Patients and Communities Act. Lifting the IMD exclusion for all individuals with substance use disorder was no easy feat and took decades to accomplish, and I believe that this is a testament to all that we can achieve when we work together to solve our Nation's problems in a bipartisan way.

With that said, I would like to echo Senator Durbin's concerns regarding the limitation of stays for just 30 days. Each individual seeking treatment for substance abuse is unique and so are their treatment needs. That is why my colleagues and I included a 90-day limit to stays in our Improving CARE Act; 90 days would both successfully accommodate a full range of patient needs, while also ensuring that there is a time limit on inpatient stays so that patients and providers can work together in a timely manner to successfully transition the patient into outpatient care.

Section 5052 recognizes this by taking language from our Improving CARE Act that requires participating, inpatient facilities to offer at least two forms of medication-assisted treatment because we recognized that everyone's treatment needs are different and there is not one single treatment or length of stay in an inpatient facility that is right for everyone. In many instances, 60 or even 90-day treatment programs may be necessary for an individual to succeed, and this is why we included a 90-day stay limit in the Improving CARE Act.

However, it should be noted that section 5052 does include additional language that I hope might rectify this issue. We included in our Improving CARE Act clarifying language that notes that nothing in the policy will supersede the existing ``Medicaid and CHIP Managed Care Final Rule'' that was finalized by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services on April 25, 2016. That rule allows for Medicaid- managed care plans to offer inpatient, substance abuse treatment for up to 15 days at a time.

Thus, it is important for us to clarify that as the architects of these provisions that Medicaid managed care plans do in fact have the authority to blend the 30-day stay limit that is authorized under section 5052 of the SUPPORT for Patients and Communities Act and the 15-day stay limit from the Managed Care Final Rule. Under this construct, Medicaid managed care plans will have the flexibility to offer inpatient, substance abuse treatment for up to 45 days.

My home State of Ohio relies heavily on Medicaid managed care and currently enrolls nearly 90 percent of all Medicaid beneficiaries into Medicaid managed care plans. While I am disappointed that we could not find the means to offer our constituents up to 90 days of care, I am grateful that many in my State will be able to have a bit of additional flexibility to extend their stays and get the treatment that they need.

Mr. President, I agree with Senator Durbin. While the policy in H.R. 6 is limited and does explicitly limit inpatient, substance abuse treatment stays to just 30 days, there are in fact opportunities for individuals with either Medicaid managed care or for individuals living in states with 1115 waivers that expanded this type of coverage to receive longer stays if necessary.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I come to the floor to talk about a few good things that have happened in Washington this week. At a time when people are looking at Washington and wondering whether things are getting done, let me just suggest, on the floor this week, we are going to pass landmark legislation that will deal with a crisis we have in our States--every single one of us--and that is the opioid issue. I will talk about that in a minute.

Mr. President, first, let me mention that today, in the Energy and Natural Resources Committee and with a vote of 19 to 4, we passed legislation to help our national parks. It is historic in the sense that it is probably the most funding we have ever put against the long- term maintenance problems at our parks.

We have more visitors at our parks than ever. Yet we have crumbling roads and bridges and water systems. We have, literally, campgrounds and other areas that are closed off because of the lack of funding for these longer term projects, which is the deferred maintenance backlog-- about $12 billion now. We have come up with a bipartisan solution to try to address that by using some of the oil and gas revenues, onshore and offshore, from Federal lands. It is an example of how we are moving things forward.

Mr. President, finally, I am encouraged that the President and his team have negotiated an agreement to add Canada, along with Mexico, to a new North American trade agreement. They are not calling it NAFTA; they have changed the name to the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement. I think this is going to be a step forward. I have now looked at the summary from it. We don't have the details yet--and I, of course, want to see the final details--but I think it has two general advantages for us.

One is that it will encourage more production in North America of things like automobiles because you have to have a higher American content--Canadian, Mexican, and U.S. content now--in automobiles than you did under the old agreement. You will have more cars being built in America and North America as well as auto parts. I think that is good.

I also think there are other things in the agreement that will help to encourage production in the United States because it will level the playing field more with our country. It does things with regard to Canada that are long overdue to try to keep it from putting protection policies in place on its agriculture products, especially its dairy products. So, when it sends powdered milk to us now, it can't take advantage of the subsidies it is providing for its milk producers, as an example. It lets our dairy farmers be able to compete on a more level playing field.

Those are the kinds of things that are in the agreement. I, again, look forward to seeing the entire agreement. I think having a North American compact that is updated is good because the NAFTA agreement was 24 years old. We have modernized it and put new labor standards in place, as an example.

The second, again, is to level the playing field further with these countries in our region that are our allies and, therefore, should not be viewed as national security threats. We shouldn't be putting tariffs in place on them on a national security basis, which we were doing and threatening to do more of, including on autos under section 232, it is called. We now have better trade agreements with these countries that are our allies but that also had some barriers in place for our exports. We need to be sure their imports are going to be fairly traded in this country. So it is positive, I think, to have this agreement.

Now, frankly, it enables us as a North American market to be more effective in dealing with some of the trade disputes we have had with other parts of the world, most notably with China, with which we do have a lot of unfair trade going on. China is not playing by the rules often, and this helps us to have Canada and Mexico with us to be able to address those issues with China, as an example.

Those are some of the things that are happening this week that I am happy about, and I think we are making some progress.

Mr. President, let me go back to what is going to be voted on, on this floor, I am told, sometime tomorrow. Probably tomorrow afternoon, this Senate will take up legislation that has now been passed in the House and passed in the Senate. There has been a conference committee between the two bodies, and it has come up with a final product. I think the final product has a lot of good things in it that will help push back against this opioid epidemic that is growing in our country.

On my way to Washington yesterday, I went by a memorial service for a young man who had died of an opioid overdose. I had known him and have known his family for a long time. It strikes close to home for pretty much everybody in this Chamber, I am sure, and for pretty much everybody who is listening. When we have our tele-townhall meetings and I ask this question, which I do regularly--I had two tele-townhall meetings last month--``Have you been affected by the opioid issue,'' most people say yes.

In fact, in parts of our State, in Southeastern Ohio, where we had a tele-townhall meeting recently, two-thirds of the people on the call said, yes, they were directly affected. That is because, sadly, this issue has grown to the point where last year 72,000 Americans lost their lives to the opioid epidemic. That is more people than we lost in the entire Vietnam war in 1 year. That many people died from opioid overdoses in 1 year. It is a grim statistic, and it is a record level.

Although Congress has done some good things in the last couple of years in passing legislation to help, those legislative efforts to have better prevention programs in place, more treatment offered, more longer term recovery programs, more first responders with Narcan--this miracle drug that can reverse the effects of an overdose--that is starting to happen, but it is being overwhelmed with the influx of drugs, particularly this new synthetic form of opioid that is coming into our communities.

It is usually called fentanyl, sometimes it is called carfentanil, but in my home State of Ohio and in other States around the country, this is resulting with a much higher overdose death rate than even the horrible drugs like heroin and the prescription drugs that are causing these opioid addictions--cocaine, methamphetamines, and crystal meth. This drug, fentanyl, is growing and growing rapidly.

I will tell you, in Ohio, we had about a 4,000-percent increase in fentanyl overdose deaths just in the last 5 years. Let me repeat that. There was a 4,000-percent increase in deaths from

fentanyl. About two-thirds of our overdose deaths over time in Ohio are due to this synthetic form of opioid.

By the way, this stuff is coming from overseas, mostly through our U.S. mail system. It is outrageous that this is being permitted without the proper screening.

The legislation we are going to vote on this week--probably tomorrow afternoon--will finally put in place legislation called the STOP Act that we have worked on. Senator Klobuchar and I are the coauthors of it. We have worked on this for 3 years now to get it to this point.

We had hearings. We had an investigation in the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations to understand what was going on and how to deal with it, how to stop it. We found out, unbelievably, that the U.S. Postal Service is the main conduit for this poison. We also found out that the Postal Service is pushing back against putting additional screening in place.

We also found out that private carriers, like FedEx, UPS, or DHL, will require every single package to have advanced electronic information provided to law enforcement to help stop this poison, to be able to find that needle in the haystack, that package out of the 900 million the post office deals with every year that might have this poison in it.

Under this legislation, the STOP Act, the post office is now going to have to do what these other private carriers do, and that is really important.

In our investigation, where we used undercover resources to talk to websites, to find out what was being offered, to look behind the websites to find out what was really going on with this fentanyl issue, we found out that if you shipped it by the U.S. mail system, they guaranteed delivery but not if you shipped it through a private carrier. Why? Because they knew the private carriers had this electronic data that provided in advance what is in it, where it is going, where it is coming from, and then law enforcement can use Big Data to figure out what packages are suspect and take them offline.

I have seen that done at the distribution centers of these private carriers. I have also spent a lot of time talking to the post office about it. They are now going to implement this legislation, I hope, aggressively.

It requires 100 percent of packages, within a couple of years, to have this data on it and right away for China. It will be 100 percent for China this year because, according to law enforcement, unfortunately, China is the country where most of this is coming from. It gives us the opportunity to be able to stop some of this poison coming into our communities. That is really important.

To me, getting that passed is just common sense. I think it is overdue. I am disappointed it took us this long. How many people had to die before Congress stood up and did the right thing with regard to telling our own post office, ``You have to provide better screening''? So it should be done.

Having said that, that is not going to solve the problem. Yes, having a cutoff of some of the supply of this poison is important. To a certain extent, it stops it from coming into our communities, and it is going to raise the price on the street because you are cutting the supply. That is important because it is so cheap and so powerful. It is 50 times more powerful than heroin, but that is not the ultimate solution.

The ultimate solution is us, isn't it? It is in our hearts, in our families, in our communities to push back by having better prevention and education in place, by ensuring people who become addicted, who have this disease of addiction, have access to treatment to get them better so their lives can be turned around and they can go back to their families and to their work and to being productive citizens.

We need longer term recovery programs because we know shorter term treatment isn't very successful. So many people relapse after a short- term treatment program, but a longer term recovery program with it-- let's say with sober housing--with support from people who are recovery coaches who have been in recovery themselves, that is going to lead to a more successful result. Drug courts are very important in this.

This legislation we are going to vote on this week does have the STOP Act, but it also has these other pieces. It reauthorizes the drug court system, as an example, diverting people out of incarceration into drug courts where they agree they are going to go into treatment and stay clean or risk going back into prison or jail if they don't. That has worked very effectively in parts of my State and around the country, as an example, to get people clean.

The legislation also does something really important that some of us have been fighting for years. We have had legislation to do this for the last 3 years, but it has really been about a 10-year battle. It is this issue of treatment centers that receive reimbursement from Medicaid being capped at a certain number of beds with a certain number of days that people can stay. It is called the IMD exclusion, or the Institutions for Mental Disease exclusion.

This is an arcane part of Federal law. It is an example where, well- intended, years ago Congress said: We are going to put this limitation in place on treatment centers because we want to deinstitutionalize people, particularly in mental health facilities, because we have had some examples of abuse in these institutional care settings and people aren't getting the help they need so let's limit the number of beds you can have in these treatment centers on the mental health side to try to deal with the problem.

Then the opioid crisis came. I would argue even before the opioid crisis this was true with regard to cocaine and meth and other things. Beds are at a premium in many places in our country. I have spots in Ohio that don't have any treatment centers. I have communities that literally don't have a place where people can go. So what happens is, these people go out of the county or out of their communities to find a place or they simply don't find treatment. Other examples are where people go to a treatment center, and they are told: Sorry, you have to come back in a couple of weeks. We just don't have any beds.

There is nothing more heartbreaking than talking to a family or talking to a parent, as I have done, who talks about, in this case, his daughter going to a treatment center with him and his wife. She was finally ready--and when you are ready with this disease, with this addiction disease, you need to act. You need to get into treatment. She was ready, but they told her: There is no room at the inn. There is no bed for you. You have to come back in a couple of weeks. It was during those 2 weeks that she had a tough time. She overdosed again in their home and died.

That family is really happy about this legislation because this will say to these treatment centers: You are not going to be capped at a certain number of beds. If you are doing a good job and providing the kind of treatment we want to have you provide, we don't want you to be capped at a certain number of beds.

Again, this legislation that is currently in place with the 16-bed limit is a vestige of another time. This will enable us to take that limit off and provide more treatment to so many Americans

We also provided in this legislation that those who want to get this exclusion lifted also have to provide at least two kinds of medication- assisted treatment to people, which we know, based on the evidence-- depending on the person--is more successful. So we want to encourage people to offer medication-assisted treatment to get people off their addiction.

It also says it is not limited to a certain kind of drug. There was some expansion of this in the previous legislation in the House, and some of us in the Senate introduced a bill a few weeks ago that is very similar to our final product that said: Let's not limit it just to those who have opioid addiction or even just opioid addiction and cocaine addiction; let's open it up to people who have substance abuse addiction--it can be alcohol, it can be crystal meth, which is unfortunately growing in some of our States, and it can be opioids. So we broadened it for individuals with substance abuse disorders.

We have said, these institutions need to provide the best possible treatment, medication-assisted treatment. Through this legislative effort that is going to be voted on here tomorrow, we have been able to open up a whole

other possibility for people who are addicted. It is something we have worked on for many years.

It is important we expand these services. It is important we tell people: If you are ready, we are going to find a treatment center for you--because we want these people to get better.

We are told most people who are addicted don't seek treatment-- probably 8 out of 10 don't. One of the tricks is how do you get these people into treatment and into treatment in a way that is comprehensive where there are not big gaps. So between the overdose and the Narcan being applied, you want to be sure there is not a gap before treatment because people go back to their old community and, unfortunately, there are too many cases of people overdosing again and again. So get them into treatment but then from treatment into longer term recovery. We have to smooth that gap out so people are handed off to a facility or to an outpatient program that can help them ensure a greater level of success.

Then how do you have this ability to say to people, ``We are going to be there for you,'' because, unfortunately, particularly with this opioid addiction, all the evidence coming in shows that long-term care really helps.

Again, Congress has already taken some steps in the last couple of years with the Cures Act and the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act, the so-called CARA legislation. There is more going on in our States.

I visited about a dozen different places in our State where they are taking advantage of the funding from the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act, legislation I coauthored a couple years ago with Senator Whitehouse on the other side. It is starting to work. It is closing some of the gaps we are talking about.

The Cures legislation goes right back to the States. Last year, Ohio got about $26 million for that. It is very helpful for us because we are struggling to provide enough resources for treatment, particularly. Then now we have this additional bill to build on CARA and Cures.

I think over time this will have the effect of reversing what we have seen as a terrible and deadly trend, which is more and more Americans overdosing, dying, not being in the workplace, not being with their families, and not being productive citizens. This is something that affects every single one of us.

If you go to your hospital, you will see that the emergency room is overburdened. If you go to your NICU unit where these babies are being born who are addicted, babies who have neonatal abstinence syndrome-- these babies can fit in the palm of your hand or your two palms--and they have to be taken through withdrawal. How sad that innocent babies have to be taken through withdrawal because they were born to a mother who was using and who was addicted.

These are all things that must be addressed and can be. Again, our legislation is going to help do that.

I will say, as much progress as we are making on education, treatment, recovery, and with our first responders helping, as long as you have this deadly poison coming in, this fentanyl, the synthetic opioid that is 50 times more powerful than heroin and relatively inexpensive because it is being made by some evil scientist somewhere out of synthetics, out of chemicals--as long as you have that overwhelming the system, it is hard to see us reversing the trend. That is why the STOP Act is so important.

We also reauthorized the HIDTA Program for high intensity drug trafficking areas. We need to push back on the supply side. We need to do more in terms of the demand side. With that, I will predict that when all of this is implemented properly, we will see some hope at the end of this dark tunnel. We will see fewer funerals like the one I was at yesterday.

Instead, what we will see are families beginning to come back together, people beginning to have the opportunity to achieve their God-given potential in life, whatever it is. God's purpose for these addicts certainly isn't to continue to be an addict. His purpose is for them to have a meaningful life also, as well as for all of us. It is in all of our interests.

My hope is, we can pass this legislation tomorrow, get it to the President, he will sign it, get it out to our States and communities, and begin to make the difference that can indeed begin to reverse this terrible epidemic and reverse the tide.

Thank you.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, today I wish to congratulate the YWCA for 160 years of service dedicated to supporting women, girls, and their families across the United States.

Throughout its storied history, YWCA has been committed to eliminating racism, empowering women, and freedom and dignity for all.

YWCA has been at the forefront of many critical social movements, including civil rights, women's empowerment, gender-based violence prevention, and more. Additionally, it is the largest network of domestic violence and sexual assault service providers in the country, reaching more than half a million women and girls annually.

Serving a total of more than 2 million women, girls, and their families each year, with 210 local associations across 46 States and the District of Columbia, this organization's impact is vast, but its focus is local.

In Ohio, there are 14 YWCA associations, and I am proud of the work they do in my State. I have worked to help YWCA's important mission through my legislation to combat sex trafficking, help those gripped by addiction--particularly mothers and children--get the care they need, improve prisoner reentry, allow kids aging out of foster care to more easily access Federal support for housing, and more.

YWCA breaks barriers and empowers women to help them live up to their God-given potential. Congratulations on your 160 years of improving the lives of women and girls--and on many more to come.

Madam President, my colleague from Maryland spoke earlier about the opioid crisis and the fact that we are about to vote on legislation tonight that is called the Opioid Crisis Response Act. He talked a little about some of the innovations going on in the State of Maryland.

We are fortunate, in my home State of Ohio, to have some great work going on as well. Like the Stabilization Centers he talked about, we now have in Ohio the opportunity for people who are treated for addiction to be given this miracle drug, Narcan, which reverses the effects of the overdose. They are able to not just go to an emergency room, where they can be taken care of for this reversal of the overdose, but also get into treatment.

The Maryhaven Addiction Stabilization Center in Columbus, OH, has become a model not just for Ohio but for the country. It is one of the early centers where they are taking some of the Federal funds we passed here and using them to come up with innovative ways to get people into treatment. Their success rate is over 80 percent. Unfortunately, that is not true with regard to other instances where someone is given this Narcan--usually by a first responder or in an emergency room setting-- then does not go into treatment but rather goes back to the environment and the old community or the gang where the addiction happened in the first place. In so many instances, first responders are called again, and sometimes again and again, to provide that Narcan to the same individual. That is not helping anyone. It is certainly not helping that individual in taking this disease of addiction and dealing with it in a serious way. Stabilization centers are a great idea. We are starting to do some of these things back home. It is an innovative way that will help us turn the tide.

This legislation we are voting on tonight will help in that regard. It provides additional funding and additional help for some of these new approaches that we badly need.

Sadly, despite some progress based on legislation we passed about a year and a half ago, the CARA Act and Cures Act--which we will talk about in a moment--things are not getting better; they are getting worse.

Every State in this Chamber has been affected by this issue. This chart behind me shows those States which last year had an increase in overdoses from opioids and other drugs. If you had an increase, you are in orange. If you had a decrease, you are in blue. Sadly, as you can see, States, including my home State of Ohio and the Presiding Officer's home State of Iowa, saw an increase.

Overall, there was about a 9-percent increase in overdose deaths last year in America. Based on the Centers for Disease Control data we got about a month ago, it was 72,000 people. Think about that. That is, of course, more individuals than we lost in the Vietnam war, and 72,000 means that this is the No. 1 cause of death now in America for those under the age of 50.

In my home State of Ohio, it is the No. 1 cause of death, period. We are in a crisis. We are in an epidemic. Despite some of these new innovations going on back in our States, we continue to see these grim records year after year. We need to reverse this. Tonight's legislation will help do that. As an example, Franklin, OH, which is in the center of Ohio near the Columbus area, just in the past 9 days, recently experienced 29 overdose deaths. Do you know what the coroner said? The coroner said this spike was caused by a synthetic drug called fentanyl.

Fentanyl is about 50 times more powerful than heroin. Fentanyl is the No. 1 killer now. We need more people to get into treatment to overcome the disease of addiction and do more to keep this fentanyl--this new scourge--out of our communities.

This legislation will do both of those things. This is consensus legislation. There are five committees that were

able to provide input for this legislation. They had public hearings. They contributed ideas to it. That includes the HELP Committee, Judiciary, Finance, Commerce, and Banking Committees. I applaud the HELP Committee chairman, Lamar Alexander, because he pulled together all these ideas from these four or five different committees and helped us come up with this consensus package.

I would like to thank Majority Leader McConnell and Democratic Leader Schumer for agreeing to bring this legislation to the floor tonight. It doesn't include everything all of us want to see, but it has important new initiatives, and it is a step in the right direction.

I note this one issue we couldn't include in this broader package is the arbitrary cap that is now in place on so many treatment centers. They are capped at 16 beds for Medicaid reimbursement, which is really a vestige of a previous policy to get people out of institutional care with mostly mental health focus, but it is having an effect on this opioid crisis we talked about because people who are ready to get into treatment are told there is no room. This is for residential treatment.

We have a solution to it. We will introduce legislation on that tomorrow. We are told that in conference, we can try to work something out because the House has legislation that addresses this.

I appreciate Senator Alexander's willingness to do that. Senator Cardin, who was on the floor earlier, and I talked about this. He is part of a bipartisan group putting our ideas out there to allow these good treatment centers to be able to take in more people without an arbitrary cap.

This package builds on two legislative projects I talked about earlier--the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act and 21st Century Cures Act.

The CARA legislation, the Comprehensive Addiction Recovery Act, provides resources directly to evidence-based programs that are working: prevention, treatment, longer term recovery, and helping our first responders. The Cures legislation, 21st Century Cures, doesn't go straight to the groups--organizations and nonprofits. It goes to the States. Then the States decide how that money is spent.

These laws, again, are beginning to make a difference for the people we represent, helping these communities to push back and fight and try new things. Even before those bills passed, some in this Chamber got together to talk about how can we ensure we have the adequate resources to take on this issue. Also, in our appropriations bills, these bills are being funded above the amount we approved here or authorized. That is good.

In about 2015, just a few years ago, we began to see this fentanyl issue really rise. In my home State of Ohio, by the summer of 2016, it had invaded our State at crisis levels. In 2014, we had 503 fentanyl overdose deaths. In 2015, that rose to over 1,000 deaths and 2,357 deaths last year. Fentanyl was responsible for more than half of those people who died of overdoses in my State and in the country last year. The numbers are now coming in for 2017, and we are hearing it will be about two-thirds of the deaths in Ohio as we continue to hear numbers for this year, 2018.

This trend of increasing fentanyl overdoses rings true all around the country. Fentanyl overdoses nationally reached nearly 30,000 last year. That means they have increased by 850 percent just in the 4 years between 2013 and 2017. Between 2013 and 2017, we have seen an 850- percent increase in overdoses due to this one drug, this synthetic opioid fentanyl.

Here is a chart that talks about this a little bit. It shows that with regard to some drugs, as tragic as the overdose rates are, heroin as an example, is pretty flat, going from 2015 up to 2018. Here is fentanyl--synthetic opioids. As you can see, it has gone up dramatically. This is the new scourge of the opioid epidemic. It is 50 times more potent than heroin. It is relatively inexpensive on the streets and relatively accessible. As a result, many traffickers have turned to this. Fentanyl is being spread to other drugs. So heroin is being laced with fentanyl. Cocaine is being laced with fentanyl, even crystal meth. This increases the potency of those drugs, increases the chance of an addiction, and with the rise of fentanyl, of course, we are seeing more and more deaths because of its power. We are also seeing that no street drug is safe from a potential overdose and death.

I heard a number of tragic examples recently during our last two tele-townhall meetings. We have another one tomorrow night. I am sure I will hear about it. The first case was last month. Sam from Shelby County talked about the fentanyl issue. He was talking about it objectively and policywise and then his voice changed and the emotion was clear. I asked him if he had a family relationship with this drug or if anything had happened. He acknowledged his son died from a fentanyl overdose. His son died a few weeks before the call. His son didn't know he was taking fentanyl because it had been laced in another drug.

The next tele-townhall meeting, also last month, Pauline from Zanesville called in and told me her brother passed away from a fentanyl overdose. He was a heroin addict, but he had no idea he was taking fentanyl. It was laced in the heroin, and he overdosed and died.

In both of those cases, they weren't using it knowingly, but the autopsy revealed it was fentanyl. This is happening all across our country, and it is causing these historically high overdose deaths. This historic trend is why we began looking into fentanyl and seeing what we can do it about it.

Senator McCaskill is on the floor. We conducted an 18-month investigation into this under the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, PSI. We asked: Where is this coming from? How can this be happening in our country?

We found out something shocking, which is, it is primarily produced in laboratories in China, and it is primarily coming to the United States through the U.S. mail system--our own government agency, the Postal Service.

Our investigators identified how easy it was to get these drugs into the United States. We had an undercover operation where we posed as buyers. Based on that, we found out these overseas sellers essentially guaranteed delivery if the fentanyl was shipped through the U.S. Postal Service. If you send it through a private carrier, it is not guaranteed--FedEx, UPS, DHL, one of those. If they sent it through the Postal Service, they guaranteed delivery. Why is that? The Postal Service has a weaker screening policy than these private carriers.

That is because of Congress. After 9/11, Congress said to the private carriers, you have to have a better screening policy, including providing advanced electronic information to law enforcement on every package that comes into America. They were doing it for other contraband and explosives more than fentanyl, but that is effective now because law enforcement and Customs and Border Protection can identify these packages. Otherwise, it is like finding a needle in a haystack. Think about that. There are 900 million packages a year in the post office alone. We need this data.

Law enforcement uses it. I have seen them do it. I have gone to the distribution center and have seen how they pull things off. They put on protective gear to open these packages because fentanyl is so deadly. The information tells them where it is from, what is in it, and where it is going. They then use Big Data to identify suspicious packages and keep some of this deadly drug out of our communities.

The law does not require the post office to do that. After 9/11, we said to the private carriers: You have to do it. We said to the post office: You need to study this issue and get back to us. They have never gotten back to us. We need to get back to them and say: You have to do it too. This is a minimum.

We at least have to know what is in these packages coming into our country so law enforcement can stop some of this poison that is overtaking our communities and robbing thousands of Americans of their God-given purpose in life. It is not to be an addict. It is not to overdose and die. We need to help.

The STOP Act--legislation I authored with my colleague Senator Amy Klobuchar from Minnesota--is included in this larger opioid package, which we will vote on this evening. The STOP Act does just that. It closes this loophole. It says to these traffickers:

You are not going to be able to continue to exploit our U.S. Postal Service to ship your fentanyl into America.

It is a commonsense solution. It deals with the most deadly aspect of the opioid epidemic and simply requires the Postal Service to get this data 100 percent from China now, 70 percent for the rest of the world by the end of this year, and by 2020, 100 percent every package.

This will help stop the flow of this poison coming into our communities, but it will reduce the supply and raise the cost, which is part of the issue with the accessibility of fentanyl. Once enacted into law, it will help.

Tonight is an opportunity for us to vote on this package. The House and the Senate package is identical. If we vote on it tonight and get it passed, it will go to the President for his signature. It will help.

Is it all we need to do? No. We need to continue to fund CARA and Cures, as we talked about, to deal with the demand side of this, the prevention side, the treatment, and longer term recovery.

This legislation also has a number of initiatives in that area. Some were talked about earlier, others were not. It builds on the CARA 2.0 legislation we introduced recently, which was the next step after the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act.

For instance, one thing it has in this bill, from CARA 2.0, is a national quality standard and best practices for recovery housing. Yes, recovery housing and Silver Living is important. There have been too many examples of housing that have not had the kind of quality you would expect, even allowing drug use within that recovery housing. We can't allow that to continue. This ensures that people transitioning out of treatment will have high-quality options.

This legislation also authorizes support for high school and college students to help children and young adults recover from substance abuse disorders. We have some amazing models in Ohio on this. The Collegiate Recovery Community at Ohio State is an example. Columbus is opening its first recovery high school next year.

CARA 2.0's contribution to the opioid legislation also includes help for the most vulnerable among us, the babies. There is $60 million for a plan of safe care for babies born dependent on drugs. This provides treatment to babies born with what is called neonatal abstinence syndrome. Their mothers are addicted, and they develop a dependency on drugs in the womb. These innocent babies then have to be taken literally through the process of withdrawal. I have been to neonatal units around our State to see these babies. It is a sad and tragic thing to see. We need more help to ensure these babies get the care they need so they may get through this withdrawal process.

To help the newborn babies further, the legislation also includes the CRIB Act, which is bipartisan legislation I coauthored that will help newborns who are suffering from addiction to recover in the best setting possible, and it will provide support for their families. The CRIB Act says that families can be reimbursed for providing the love and care the children and babies need at that time. It is a very sad situation. I see this across my State, but I also know this is happening across the country.

There is a great group called Brigid's Path in Dayton, OH, which I have had the opportunity to visit. It provides loving care and support for these babies, but it gets no reimbursement for it. This is an opportunity to provide as much care and treatment as is necessary to help these children achieve their potential in life. The CRIB Act and the $60 million in funding will help the babies who have been born dependent on drugs. It will help Brigid's Path and other great organizations like it to help these kids in need.

There are a number of other important programs that will be reauthorized in this legislation, including the drug courts, drug-free communities grants, and high-intensity drug trafficking areas grants, to help our law enforcement at every level be able to push back against drug traffickers.

As we pass this legislation, much as we did 2 years ago with the passage of CARA and CURES, Congress is committing itself to actually putting politics aside--it is not just bipartisan; I think it is nonpartisan--to dealing with the real epidemic that is out there, and to helping the people we represent. It is not a moment too soon, as 72,000 lives were lost last year. These are not just statistics; these are people with hopes and dreams and families.

We need to help those who are gripped by addiction to break free from those grips. We need to give those in law enforcement the tools they need to stop these poisons from infiltrating our country. We need to once again commit ourselves to additional resources at the Federal level that can help our States and our local communities and our private sector respond. The comprehensive opioid legislation we are voting on today, including the STOP Act and more, will help to do just that.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 4013 and ask unanimous consent that it be reported by number.

I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. President, today I want to talk about some of the positive steps the U.S. Senate is about to take in pushing back against----

There is no objection.

I thank my colleague, and I am going to talk about him in a second and the work we have done with regard to pushing back against the opioid epidemic that has hit our States. In this body, every single Member is affected by it, and our country is affected by it in very significant ways.

Because of the dangerous hurricanes that are approaching our coast, it looks as though the vote we had expected tomorrow and the debate we had expected tomorrow on the opioid package may be postponed based on what I just heard from the majority leader. But in the next several days, the Senate is expected to take up comprehensive legislation that comes from four or five different committees in Congress to fight the addiction crisis, to help our communities combat some of the deadliest aspects of this crisis nationally. This help is urgently needed.

Let's start with talking about how Congress got here.

First, just a couple of years ago, we passed two bills in Congress that were historic and are making a difference. One is called the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act, or CARA; the other is called the 21st Century Cures Act.

CARA, which I coauthored with my colleague Sheldon Whitehouse, who is on the Senate floor with us--he spoke just a moment ago--provides resources directly to evidence-based prevention, treatment, and recovery programs. These are nonprofit programs. For the most part, they are able to apply to the Federal Government directly for grant money. They are doing things that are innovative and new to try to get at this problem, and in many respects, they are working and making a difference.

This year alone, there will be about $608 million spent on these programs that offer innovative solutions to this stubborn problem that is affecting everyone in this Chamber.

The Cures legislation, 21st Century Cures legislation, this year will be $500 million annually. That goes directly to the States, and the States then give grants to various programs in those States.

In my home State of Ohio, for instance, $26 million has come each of the last 2 years. Sadly, Ohio is one of the hardest hit States in the country, so we have a larger grant allocation than some States that have not had as many overdoses and deaths and rates of addiction that are as high as we have had.

I was a very strong supporter of the 21st Century Cures funding, and I applaud Senators Alexander and Murray, as well as Senator Blunt and other Appropriations Committee members on both sides of the aisle for their work on that.

Of course, with regard to the CARA legislation, it is actually working out there. I have now had the opportunity to see how it is working. I have been to about a dozen CARA grant recipients in Ohio over the last year alone. I have seen new and powerful ways that the communities back in Ohio are helping to turn the tide of addiction.

Last month, as an example, I visited the Whitehall fire station outside of Columbus, OH. They are doing something innovative for a fire station. They have opened their doors and partnered with another organization. They get CARA funding, and the other organization gets Cures funding to provide immediate help for those who are coming in and are seeking it or have overdosed; Narcan has been applied and has reversed the effects of these overdoses. Yet that gap that so often occurs in our communities doesn't occur there because it is seamless. People can go right into treatment.

The program, again, was made possible by this CARA grant. It opens the doors of the fire station, and it is working.

I was there at a time when, just coincidentally, an addict came in. His name was Blake. Blake was, as he described himself, a heroin addict, and he had heroin on his person. I had the opportunity to speak with Blake and offer him some words of encouragement. I had an opportunity to ask him why he was there and what had happened in the past. He said that he had been to three treatment programs. They hadn't worked. He had gone straight from a short-term treatment program right back to the streets. The gap had occurred.

He also said that he was ready, and he appreciated the opportunity to go straight into a treatment program, which he had not had before.

I had a chance to speak with him, and I told him to stay in touch with me, to let me know what is going on. Last week, he called, and Blake said that he is now in a 3-month treatment program in Portsmouth, OH. He is optimistic; he is confident. He believes that because of this approach, he has an opportunity now to get clean, to get back with his family and get back to work.

This is what is often needed: a seamless transition from immediate medical attention--the application of Narcan to reverse the effects--to treatment, to longer term recovery in order for people to overcome their addiction. That is what CARA and Cures prioritize, and that is why these programs are so important.

Once again, we will see in the funding this year that those programs have been held up. The good parts of the programs, in particular, are being used as an example for the entire country.

Despite the legislative progress we have made, and despite what I see back home with communities beginning to make a difference, overall, the situation is not getting better; it is getting worse. You might ask: Why is that?

Well, I believe it is for one simple reason, and that is the advent of new drugs, particularly less expensive and more powerful synthetic opioids that have come into our communities in the last few years. The new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, CDC, show that overdose deaths increased 9 percent from 2016 to 2017, the last year for which we have data. My home State of Ohio had a 9\1/2\ percent increase in overdose deaths.

In total, CDC estimates that 72,000 Americans--72,000 Americans--died last year from overdoses, the No. 1 cause of death for Americans under the age of 50. Over 48,000 of those overdose deaths were caused by opioids, and about 30,000 of those were caused by synthetic forms, particularly fentanyl. That is more than 60 percent, so this is the big issue right now.

Two-thirds of the overdose deaths in my home State of Ohio are being caused by synthetic opioids, fentanyl. Columbus, OH, unfortunately had a number of deaths over a short period of time, all due to fentanyl. There were about 20,000 fentanyl overdose deaths in 2016, meaning there has been a 50-percent increase in just 1 year.

When you go from 2013 to 2017, there has been an 850-percent increase just during 5 years--an 850-percent increase in fentanyl overdose deaths in our country.

The opioid crisis has continued to tighten its grip around communities across our country, and the emergence of fentanyl has presented a new challenge in turning the tide of this epidemic. Just as we were making progress, this more deadly, less expensive scourge has come into our families, our communities, our States. That is why we need to take action--and take action this week.

I would like to thank the majority leader, Senator McConnell, and the Democratic leader, Senator Schumer, for agreeing to bring this legislation to the floor.

I would also like to thank Chairman Lamar Alexander for his good work in bringing together all of the different proposals from these four or five committees I talked about and negotiating with all sides to come up with consensus legislation. This should be nonpartisan, not just bipartisan. This is something that is attacking our communities at their core.

I would like to thank and commend the several committees that have held public hearings and contributed legislative ideas to this mix. That includes the Judiciary Committee, the HELP Committee, the Finance Committee, and others.

This bipartisan consensus package puts politics aside and does what is right for our communities. It includes some additional legislative priorities I have been working on over the past couple of years that I believe are going to make a real difference in this fight.

Earlier this year, again with Senator Whitehouse and others, we introduced CARA 2.0, the next version of the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act. A number of those provisions are included in this package.

One is a national quality standard and best practices for recovery housing. It is critical for people, as they transition out of treatment and into longer term recovery, to have this housing. But it also needs to meet these higher standards because of many examples where it has not and has failed those individuals and families.

The legislation also authorizes support for high school and college students to help children and young adults recover from substance abuse disorders. We have had amazing models in Ohio for this, like the Collegiate Recovery Community at Ohio State. Columbus is now opening its first recovery high school next year.

Finally, CARA 2.0 contributed the opioid legislation that includes $60 million for a plan of safe care for babies born dependent on drugs. Their mothers are addicted, and they are born with neonatal abstinence syndrome. It is a very sad situation, but it is a reality in my State and in so many others.

To further help these newborn babies, the legislation includes what is called the CRIB Act, which is bipartisan legislation I coauthored that helps newborns suffering from addiction get the best care possible in the best setting possible to get the love and support they need to be able to recover.

It will also help ensure that babies born with neonatal abstinence syndrome get the help they need in their early stages of development, so they can live up to their God-given purpose in life, which is not to live with this.

The legislation before us also reauthorizes a number of important programs that have a proven record of success, like drug courts, like the drug-free communities prevention grants, like the high-intensity drug trafficking areas, where law enforcement can better coordinate at every level. These are all positive strides that will help improve what is working in combating this epidemic and provide more resources to help some of the most vulnerable groups affected.

But, colleagues, I think the most important and immediate difference in turning the tide on this opioid epidemic will come from a bill that is called the STOP Act. It is a bipartisan bill that I coauthored with Amy Klobuchar from Minnesota. It will combat the scourge of fentanyl we talked about earlier. This issue of an 850-percent increase in this one kind of drug coming in, causing more and more overdoses--synthetic opioids--has to be addressed; 81 Americans are dying every single day. That is the best data we have from last year. This year, unfortunately, it is likely to be even higher. It is a new poison flooding our communities.

The STOP Act will close a loophole that drug traffickers have been using to ship fentanyl into our country. Unbelievably, fentanyl is actually manufactured primarily in China, and it primarily comes into our communities through the U.S. mail system. You might think this comes overland from Mexico or somewhere else, but this is coming in through our mail system, primarily from China.

We conducted an 18-month investigation into this in the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which I chair, and we revealed just how easy it is to purchase fentanyl online and have it shipped to the United States.

Based on our undercover investigation, these drugs can be found through a simple Google search, and overseas sellers we accessed essentially guaranteed delivery if the fentanyl was sent through the U.S. mail system.

To be clear, they guaranteed delivery if it is sent through the U.S. mail system, not if it is sent through other carriers, like private carriers--FedEx, UPS, DHL, and others.

It is easy to see why they prefer the Postal Service for shipping these deadly synthetic drugs. The Postal Service has a weaker screening standard than do the private carriers.

After 9/11, Congress passed a law requiring carriers like UPS, FedEx, and DHL to get what is actually called electronic advance data on international packages entering the United States. This electronic advance data allows law enforcement to have a chance to stop this poison because they can find out where the package is from, what is in it, and where it is going. They can then use good data, use algorithms that they have come up with to determine which packages are suspect and pull them off the line.

I have seen this. I have seen U.S. Customs and Border Protection do it at distribution centers for these private carriers. I have also seen, unfortunately, that the Postal Service is not doing what they should be doing.

Without the information identifying packages, it is next to impossible; it is like identifying a needle in a haystack.

Fentanyl is 50 times more potent than heroin, and it is relatively inexpensive. It is so deadly that as little as 2 milligrams, equal to a few specks of salt, is enough to be fatal. Drug users and dealers have moved to fentanyl as a more accessible, less expensive alternative. I am told that 1 gram of the deadly mixture of heroin and fentanyl can cost about half as much on the street as 1 gram of heroin alone.

Drug users seeking a less expensive and stronger high are seeking it out, and drug dealers are mixing it into a number of other street drugs. No street drug is safe because the fentanyl is being mixed. It is being laced into all kinds of other drugs, often unknowingly to the person buying the drug.

To give you an idea of how deadly this drug is, recently police in Columbus seized 2.2 pounds of fentanyl, which is equal to about 3\1/2\ cups--a small enough amount to fit in a plastic bag in your kitchen. That 2.2 pounds of fentanyl is enough to kill 500,000 people, roughly the population of the city of Cleveland.

Because of its extreme potency, deadly doses can be shipped in small packages that are almost impossible to identify without having the necessary information and screening devices in the Postal Service. The U.S. Postal Service system isn't required to do it yet. As a result, they have chosen not to do so. Only recently, under congressional pressure, have they begun getting this data on some packages entering the United States.

Even so, last year, based on their testimony, they say they have received data on 36 percent of the international packages. That is a step in the right direction. By the way, that still means that over 318 million packages are coming here with no screening at all.

Even when they have identified drugs--packages that are likely containing drugs--only 80 percent are given to law enforcement. So 20 percent is still going into our communities. This needs to be changed. It is a glaring loophole. Everyone knows it. It undermines the safety and security of our country in fundamental ways.

The STOP Act will significantly disrupt the flow of fentanyl into the United States by simply holding the U.S. Postal Service, a Federal agency, to the same standards as private carriers. It will require the Postal Service to collect advance electronic data immediately on 70 percent of packages entering the United States by the end of the year and 100 percent for China. Then, it will require 100 percent of international packages in the United States by the end of 2020.

It is a commonsense solution to address the most urgent and deadliest aspects of the opioid epidemic we face. At the very least, it will increase the risk of sending these drugs into our country and raise the street price of fentanyl. That is why it has such broad bipartisan support. There is a growing momentum behind this legislation, and I look forward to the Senate's passing it in the next several days as part of the broader legislation we talked about earlier.

It will not solve the crisis, but it will act as a tourniquet to stop the flow of fentanyl in this country and it will allow comprehensive programs, such as CARA and the Cures legislation, to be prioritized and to function and to allow Americans to live up to their full potential and to allow our communities to heal.

I look forward to President Trump's signing this legislation into law--both the broader opioid legislation and the STOP Act--so it can begin making a difference in communities in my home State of Ohio and all around the country.

I yield back.

Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, first, I would like to comment briefly on the last two speeches. The first was from Senator Leahy. He talked about the appropriations process. I commend him, as I did on the floor today in person, for the work he has done with Senator Shelby and others to actually move these appropriations bills, these spending bills, through the process. For the first time in a couple of decades, we have the opportunity to actually get our work done. It is incredibly important for all the right reasons, including having proper oversight of the Federal agencies and departments. He deserves credit for that.

My colleague from Oregon just talked for a moment about the Kavanaugh hearings. He talked about the fact that he believes there is not enough information out about Brett Kavanaugh. Let me just say this. There has never been more information about any nominee to the Supreme Court, ever, in the history of our country. In fact, there are more pages of documents that have been provided on Brett Kavanaugh than for the past five Supreme Court confirmations combined--over 450,000 pages.

Maybe my colleagues who raised these concerns decided a long time ago they were going to vote no and said they are and that is fine, but I don't think you can blame it on the fact that there isn't enough documentation.

I know what they went, and I understand why they would want it. What they want is the documents that went through his office when he was Staff Secretary, which is a job at the White House where you are kind of like the traffic cop, where everything that goes into the Oval Office and everything that comes out is coordinated and disseminated properly. But those weren't his documents. Yes, it is not appropriate to see all of those documents. That would be, by the way, millions of additional pages--millions. But the 488,000 pages that have been provided--including all of the documents from his legal positions where he was a judge, where he was an associate counsel in the White House-- those have all been provided. That is good, and we should look at them and look at them carefully.

It is not about the documents. It is about some fundamental differences about philosophy. I like his philosophy. He says that you shouldn't legislate from the bench and that you should be independent as a judge and be fair.

He is totally qualified. The American Bar Association is sometimes criticized by Republicans as being too far to the left. It just said that he is ``eminently qualified.'' In fact, they gave him their highest rating, and they gave it unanimously. This just happened last Friday. Not everybody knows this. This person is not just qualified. I believe he is as qualified as anybody in the country to be on the U.S. Supreme Court. I am looking forward to having the opportunity to have this vote here on the floor. I hope it can be bipartisan, as it has been for the nominees that President Obama brought forward, including then-Solicitor General Kagan and Judge Sotomayor. They were big bipartisan votes. Let's get back to that when somebody is as qualified as this candidate clearly is.

Mr. President, I wish to speak about this issue of opioids and the crisis our country faces.

Just in the last couple of weeks we have gotten reports from the Centers for Disease Control from last year's data on overdoses and deaths: 72,000 Americans lost their lives to overdoses last year from drugs. Most of those were from opioids. This is heroin, prescription drugs, and, now, these synthetic opioids--72,000 Americans.

In the wake of that, it is encouraging to me to hear the Senate talking about the possibility of bringing a package of legislation to the floor that will help to push back against this crisis and begin to turn the tide. We have to do it--not just talk about it. We have to act because this crisis is upon us and is very real.

These new efforts that we should move forward on would build on what this Senate has already done with regard to the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act, or the CARA legislation, which is now being implemented in my State of Ohio and around the country. There is also the Cures legislation, or the 21st Century Cures Act. It has some additional provisions that allow States to take funding and use it to fight this opioid addiction. That is smart. There are smart ways for us to fight this opioid epidemic. We know that, and we are beginning to do that.

At the Federal level we can play a role in this, among other things, by taking better practices from around the country and ensuring they are being used back home in our States. I have seen this firsthand because I have been around the State of Ohio a lot since this legislation actually passed. I have actually visited more than a dozen grant recipients of CARA and Cures grants to see what they are doing and then spreading that around to other communities--maybe communities that haven't been able to get the grants but want to see something innovative to be able to push back.

Last Friday I visited Hope Village Recovery Center in Portage County, OH. They received more than $500,000 in CARA funding to expand a badly needed medication-assisted treatment program. They decided to look at this in a very comprehensive way, and it is working. They are getting people who normally wouldn't step up for treatment to come for treatment, and their success rate for getting people through treatment and not relapsing is relatively high. That is so important right now, because if you don't get people into treatment with an addiction, which is a disease, you are not going to be able to solve this problem.

The comprehensive approach includes treatment, counseling, outpatient treatment, aftercare services, peer support--and these are coaches who are in recovery themselves, and that is very effective--and transportation services to get people back and forth. This holistic approach is what we need to help people begin to heal, get over their addiction, get back to their families, back to work, and back to achieving their God-given purpose in life, which is not to be an addict using these drugs.

Last week I also visited CommQuest Recovery Services in Stark County, OH, to see their new program, an innovative program called the ``mom and me program.'' These are moms who want to help to get over their addiction. They are struggling. This program allows them to come on board to this facility that I got to see, to be able to have some of the loving support and care from people around them, but also to have their kids come with them. This is very unusual. Very few treatment centers in the country allow children to come into the treatment program. We have found through evidence-based programs looking at this that, in fact, if you allow the kids in there and there is proper supervision, it helps. It helps the mothers heal. It helps the kids to be able to heal.

So this is an innovative program that I think is going to end up with great results. They are just getting started on it, but it is going to foster the kind of success that we want to see.

Programs like these are working. Yet the epidemic seems to be getting

worse. Why is that? Well, because we need to do more of this evidence- based stuff. We need to be sure that every community has the opportunity to provide treatment because a lot of people still can't get treatment. We need to encourage people not to go down this funnel of addiction by much more effective and stronger prevention and education programs. There are things we have to do.

CARA 2.0, or the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act 2.0, is how it was introduced. That legislation that I have introduced will ensure that those programs that are working get additional help so that the States can do even more by leveraging some of these Federal dollars to be able to do more with the private sector and with the States to be able to turn this tide of addiction.

I talked about the 72,000 lives lost last year. That was a record number. Here is a map of the States. This is a map of the changes in overdose deaths from last year. If it is a purple or blue State, that means they are doing a little better. Look at this map. Almost every State, unfortunately, is not purple or blue. These States that are tan and brown, like my home State of Ohio, indicate an actual increase in opioid deaths last year.

Why is this? I think one of the main reasons for this is because there is a new danger afoot. There is a new surge in drugs. It is very powerful. It is 50 times more powerful than heroin. It is very inexpensive. It is coming primarily from China and coming primarily through our U.S. Postal Service, if you can believe it. It is called synthetic opioids. Fentanyl is the name that most of it is called. Some of it is called Carfentanil and other derivatives, but this fentanyl-- this synthetic opioid--is now the biggest problem we have in our States. This is the growing crisis.

Here is a chart that shows what has happened just since 2015 until now. It shows that, in fact, methamphetamines, other opioids, heroin, cocaine are all relatively flat. But look at this big increase. The big increase is with synthetic opioids. When you look at those 72,000 deaths from last year, the majority of them were from opioids. Again, increasingly, it is from these synthetic opioids.

What I hear on the frontlines in Ohio--whether it was at this Hope Village Recovery Center that I talked about or the CommQuest facility-- is that unless we combat that influx of fentanyl, we are not going to be able to turn the tide, because despite some of the good programs and the good work that is being done with these programs, we are being overrun with fentanyl.

Over the past week alone, in the Columbus, OH, area, the Franklin County coroner has handled 18 overdose deaths, and 5 were within 24 hours. There were 18 deaths, and 5 were within 24 hours. Imagine that. The cause, the coroner suspects, is fentanyl. If you look at some of these deaths that we talked about, the 72,000--or even deaths that occurred to people who thought they were taking cocaine or methamphetamine or something else--often it is because the fentanyl has been sprinkled into these drugs and the fentanyl is what is causing the overdoses and the deaths. It is 50 times more powerful, as I said, and that is the new scourge of the opioid epidemic.

From 2013 to 2017, fentanyl overdose deaths have increased nationally by 850 percent.

As coroners' reports for 2017 continue to come in throughout my home State of Ohio, fentanyl now appears to be involved in two-thirds of the deaths in Ohio. So those are record numbers, and two-thirds are from fentanyl. That is consistent with what I am hearing on the frontlines.

Unbelievably, we know where it is coming from, and we are not doing enough to stop it. It is being made in laboratories in China, primarily, and in other countries and shipped into the United States through our own U.S. Postal Service, a government agency. We conducted an 18-month investigation into this issue in the subcommittee that I chair called the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. We did a thorough study. We had undercover people working with us. We went on the websites to find out what is happening. We found out how easy it is to purchase fentanyl online and have it shipped to the United States.

Based on our undercover investigation, these drugs can be found through a simple Google search, and overseas sellers we accessed through an undercover investigator essentially told us they will guarantee the delivery if this poison is sent through the U.S. Postal Service. They will not guarantee it if it goes through a private carrier like UPS, FedEx, or DHL.

Why is that? It is because the private carriers are required to provide law enforcement with big data, or electronic data, in advance as to what the packages are, where they are coming from, where they are going, and what is in them. Law enforcement can then use big data, use their algorithms, figure out which packages are suspect, and get them off the line. I have seen it. I have been in those facilities. I have seen big packages being taken off and, therefore, lives being saved. At a minimum, this will increase the cost on the street.

What is the ultimate answer to this? It is prevention, education, a change in our hearts and in our families, better treatment so that people who have this disease can get the treatment just like another illness they might have, and dealing with this issue of longer term recovery, which leads to more success in treatment.

Those are all essential, but right now we have to put a tourniquet on this, folks. We have to stop the fentanyl from flooding into our country. Look at what it is doing. There is an 850-percent increase.

The information tells law enforcement what they need to be able to pull these packages off if it is provided. Yet, unbelievably, all of the private carriers are required to do it and have been since 9/11.

The post office has been spared. The thought was that the post office should study the issue. Well, I am waiting for the report.

Meanwhile, because of pressure from the Congress, the U.S. Postal Service is starting to look at some of these packages. Last year, they now testified before us in the subcommittee, they did receive data on about 36 percent of the international packages--not 100 percent as these other carriers have to do, but 36 percent. But that means that more than 318 million packages--318 million packages--are coming in with little or no screening at all and without this data.

Even when the post office conducted a pilot program to screen for these drugs, by the way, 80 percent of the time, they testified, these packages that were targeted by Customs and Border Protection were able to be pulled off, but 20 percent of the time they did not get the information to law enforcement. Also, in many cases, the information provided was not useful to law enforcement.

So we need to ensure it is 100 percent of these packages. We need to ensure that all of this information is getting to law enforcement, and we need to be sure that the information is useful and legible.

The bipartisan STOP Act is actually an answer to this. The STOP Act is very simple. My coauthor of the STOP Act is Senator Amy Klobuchar from Minnesota. As we have both said, this is a simple, commonsense, and, quite frankly, long overdue reform. It simply says: Let's hold the post office to the same standard to which we hold these private carriers. Let's say they have to provide this data to law enforcement so that we can begin to address this issue and push back to keep this poison out of our communities.

This bill has been approved for a floor vote on the Republican side. I think it is very close to being approved for a floor vote on the Democratic side. We are very close to a consent agreement to get this broader opioids package I talked about to the floor as well.

I am very pleased that we are taking up that package this month. We need to ensure that whatever concerns people have, they are very frank about it. We have to get the politics out of this, folks. We have to be sure that we are moving forward, as we have been able to do on the CARA legislation and the CURES legislation, not just on a bipartisan basis but on a nonpartisan basis, because this scourge is affecting all of our constituents and it is one that we have to address here at the Federal level to help our States, to help our communities, and to help our families to be able to respond.

The broader opioid package we talked about would include the STOP

Act, but it also would include some other important legislation. It will include a number of provisions from CARA 2.0, such as national recovery housing standards and recovery support programs for high school and college students struggling with addiction, which have worked really well in Ohio. It will include $60 million for a plan of safe care for babies who are born dependent on substances. These babies are born with what is called neonatal abstinence syndrome. These are innocent, small babies who are often born premature.

I have been in neonatal units around our hospitals in Ohio, and I have seen these babies. It is so sad. They have to be taken through withdrawal as tiny babies. We need to ensure that we do a better job of preventing this by working with the moms as they become pregnant and by ensuring that these kids get the help they need.

It also includes the CRIB Act, bipartisan legislation that would help newborns suffering from addiction recover in the best care setting and provide support for their families.

Again, this has been bipartisan. I have worked with Members on both sides of the aisle on the CRIB Act. It helps to ensure that these babies, when they are born with this neonatal abstinence syndrome, can get the care they need. It is working for these organizations that are doing it, but they need help--specifically, Medicaid reimbursement that they cannot get currently.

The bill also reauthorizes a number of other important programs that have a proven record of success, like the Office of National Drug Control Policy, drug courts, drug-free communities prevention grants, and the high-intensity drug trafficking areas grants, where law enforcement is focusing on drug interdiction in some of the worst areas of our country for drug use and drug addiction.

The STOP Act must be part of that Senate bill, as well, because, again, anything we offer to help deal with this issue of opioids has to include stopping the fentanyl from coming in.

It is time for Congress to move. This should be noncontroversial. It is common sense. We know where these drugs are coming from, we know they are devastating our communities, and we know how we can stop this deadly trend. Let's pass the STOP Act. Let's pass this broader opioid package as soon as possible.

Let's give Americans who are fighting addiction a chance to live up to their God-given potential.

Mr. President, today I want to join my colleague from Minnesota and other Senators in talking about our colleague, an American icon, who played an outsized role in our Nation's great story.

Navy captain, Congressman, and U.S. Senator, John McCain was first and foremost a patriot. Throughout his whole life, a very prolific life, he lived the motto of his 2008 Presidential campaign, which was simply ``Country First.''

I had the privilege of helping Senator McCain during that 2008 campaign. I was in the private sector then. I took time off to spend about 6 weeks with him, traveling around the country. I was on the campaign trail with a group of his loyal friends, including the first friend, Lindsey Graham.

I had known John for many years, but you really get to know somebody in a different way during the intensity and the pressure of a national campaign. I played the role of his opponent, then-Senator Barack Obama, to prepare him for his debates, and I took that role very seriously-- maybe too seriously on occasion. It was my job to get under his skin and prepare him well for the debates, and I did it.

Many of my colleagues will tell you he was a fighter and a tough competitor and did not mince words. I was on the other end of that. After some spirited debates, I was very glad that in the real world I was actually on his side.

Needless to say, he wasn't happy with me during those debate sessions. I think Cindy McCain still hasn't forgiven me, by the way, for some of the things I said during the debate preparation, playing the role of then-Senator Obama. Even 2 years later, after I was first elected and joined him here in the U.S. Senate, he would introduce me to reporters here in the hall by saying: That's the jerk who played Obama.

The John McCain I got to know through the intensity of that Presidential campaign was principled. He was patriotic, he was passionate, and his heart was in the right place.

He also had a sense of humor that was intact. I remember when a bad poll would come out, he would gather us around and say: Don't worry. It's always darkest before it's pitch black.

One of the memories I will never forget was during one of those debate preparations in a theater at the Morgan Library in New York City. At the start of the debate practice, I was backstage behind a curtain because I wanted it to be realistic; I would be coming out from behind the curtain and going to the podium, just as you would do in a Presidential debate. It was in late September 2008--I think it was September 24--just as the financial crisis was hitting and hitting hard. It is difficult to go back to that moment today, but the mindset at the time was that we were in a true crisis. The stock market had crashed, and the country was mired in financial turmoil.

As I stood there behind the curtain, getting ready to come out, John McCain and two of his top campaign advisers were on the stage, getting into their own debate, and their debate was about whether to suspend the campaign, postpone the first debate that was scheduled to occur just a few days

later, and fly back to Washington, DC, to try to work out some legislative solution to bolster the then really shaky financial system.

I distinctly remember one of the advisers raising concerns that suspending the campaign would hurt them politically. They just couldn't do it.

By the way, that was a point of view that was shared by pretty much every political pundit and probably would be today.

I remember John McCain pushing back. He said: It is the right thing to do, to suspend this campaign. If we don't fix this, there won't be a country left to govern.

It is the right thing to do. If we don't fix this, there won't be a country left to govern.

He suspended his campaign and he returned to Washington to jump into the arena--like his hero, Teddy Roosevelt--and to try to fix things. John McCain was less worried about the political fallout than he was about what was at stake for our great country. Country first.

He didn't win that campaign, but I think he taught all of us a lesson about how to lose. He gave a generous concession speech that put country first. He was someone a lot of us looked to for counsel and worked with on many issues, often national security issues, in my case. He was an expert. I worked on some issues like Ukraine, but also on other matters.

Just in the last year, he played a key role in helping us enact reforms here in the U.S. Senate that are making a real difference right now in combating online sex trafficking. This was through legislation that I had introduced called the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act, or SESTA. This SESTA legislation was something he was very involved with. Cindy McCain has a long history in this area. She is a real expert on it, and she was instrumental in the legislation and these reforms, as was the McCain Institute.

John had a passion for it. He was the first Republican cosponsor of the bill and a passionate advocate. He believed in his heart that the sale of women and children online was just wrong, and it should never happen, certainly not in this country in this century.

About 6 months ago, this legislation, the SESTA bill, was about to be voted on. After getting permission from my Democratic coauthor, Senator Richard Blumenthal, who agreed with me, I approached John McCain, and I asked him if we could name this anti-sex-trafficking legislation ``the McCain bill,'' after him and after Cindy and all the work he had done-- his passion for it. His response was immediate and classic McCain. He said: No, that wouldn't be right. I strongly support the legislation, but you all did the work. It isn't about me; it's about getting this done for those women and those children. Country first.

For me, this Chamber is never going to be the same place without him. It is as simple as that, and Lindsey Graham said that well earlier. For me, this place, the Senate, and our country, for that matter, are better off because of him. He dedicated his life to those liberties that we enjoy as Americans, and he took it upon himself to defend and represent them and try to spread them around the globe.

He joined the U.S. Navy to protect our country, spent more than 5 years as a prisoner of war, was stubbornly patriotic to his own detriment, and served in the House of Representatives and in the U.S. Senate, representing not just his Arizona constituents, which he did well, but as he viewed it, the entire country. Country first.

Now, as a gesture of our Nation's gratitude for the patriotic path he blazed, Senator McCain will lie in state in the U.S. Capitol, draped in the flag that he spent his life serving.

John McCain was a hero in the flesh right here in this century, and I feel blessed for having known him.

The last conversation I remember having with John was right out here in the anteroom off the Senate floor. It was during his very last days here. He was in a wheelchair. He had a brace on his leg, necessary because of the chemotherapy, and his voice was faltering. We sat and we talked, first about the SESTA legislation and Cindy's role. John always had a funny line. In this case he joked, saying: Passing that legislation will save my marriage.

Then he started talking about his kids. He went into detail about what they were doing, especially his sons in the military and what they were accomplishing and his daughter Meghan and her work in the media world, how proud he was of them. His voice strengthened, and his eyes shown with pride as he talked about each of them. I muttered something about that being another part of his legacy, and he gave me that crooked smile.

Family and country first.

My wife Jane and I send our condolences to John's amazing wife Cindy, to his seven proud sons and daughters, and to the entire McCain family.

Godspeed, John McCain.

Mr. President, today I want to talk about a huge responsibility we have here in the Senate and a great opportunity that lies before us. The Senate is asked to confirm nominees both for executive branch appointments and for judicial branch appointments. We have heard a lot of great debate here on the Senate floor over the past 1\1/2\ years on some of these nominees. We were able to confirm Justice Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, who I believe is doing a superb job. That was quite a debate here. In the meantime, we have been able to confirm a number of circuit court judges, some district court judges, and executive branch appointments.

That is all important, but once again, we are asked to do something that is perhaps our most important task, and that is to fill yet another opening on the U.S. Supreme Court. There are only nine of these Justices, and this is a lifetime appointment. What the district court and circuit court do--it all comes up to this one Court. Our Founders created this Court in order to have a place where people could get a fair hearing and where we could have a dispassionate look at whether what we pass here fits within the Constitution and whether laws are being properly interpreted. These are hard and tough issues, and we want the right people there to do it. Once again, because of an opening that has occurred on the Supreme Court, we have the opportunity and responsibility to step up as a body and do that.

In this case, we are asked to fill the seat of Justice Kennedy, who is viewed by many as being an important player in the Court because he was often the swing vote. He is a thoughtful guy. I think we are very fortunate in that one of Justice Kennedy's law clerks has been nominated by the President and has agreed to step forward for this confirmation process to be an Associate Justice on the Supreme Court and to fill that ninth spot. My hope is that this can be done in a way where we have honest and spirited but fact-driven debate on the floor of the Senate.

I have to tell you that I am probably a little biased in this case because I know this nominee personally. I think a lot of him, not just as a judge, where he has an amazing record on the second highest court in the land, but also as a person.

This is the third time I have come to the Senate floor to talk about him because I feel so strongly and I want to be sure that he gets a fair shake. I think that as the American people get to know him better, he will see a lot of support around the country for his confirmation because people will see that he is the kind of person they would want to have representing them, their family, and their children on the Supreme Court.

I worked with him in the George W. Bush White House. He had a job there, which we will talk about in a second, called Staff Secretary, which is a job where you are responsible for being the traffic cop, basically, for the Oval Office. The documents that go into the Oval Office and go out of the Oval Office go through that office. It is not a substantive job in that sense, but it is an important job to the President to have somebody he trusts to decide what he looks at, what he doesn't look at, and how this material is then distributed out.

He is someone who became close to President George W. Bush. President George W. Bush, as he has said many times publicly and to me and others privately, thinks the world of him. He got to know him very well.

So I know Brett Kavanaugh more as a person, as a friend, as a father, and as a husband, but his legal background is incredibly impressive. I don't think anybody is better qualified to serve on the Supreme Court based on his legal background and his judicial philosophy. I know some of my colleagues have now met with him, as well.

I am told that as of yesterday, 49 of the 51 Republicans who are here in the Senate have now met with Judge Kavanaugh. I am glad to hear that. By the way, the reactions have been very positive. I talked to most of my colleagues about their meetings with him, and a number of them have gone out of their way to speak publicly about how impressed they were with him, his demeanor, his background, and his character.

I am also pleased to hear that several of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have now met with Judge Kavanaugh, as well. I think that is really important. I know that this is a partisan town these days, and it is tough to get things done, but in this case, I would hope that more of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle agree to sit down with him and talk to him. I think he needs to have the ability to talk one-on-one to some people who perhaps don't know him well, based on some of the comments I have seen about him. I think he could put some of their concerns to rest.

For some, that may not be possible. They may have philosophical differences with his approach to the law. I get that, but I hope they will take the opportunity to sit down with him and talk to him. The Supreme Court is going to be faced with a lot of tough issues, and this needs to be a serious consideration. I am pleased that we are taking it seriously.

Some have said that this is going too fast. I will tell you that the amount of time between when he was nominated and when his hearing will be--which is scheduled now for the week of September 4--is more time than elapsed during the previous few Supreme Court nominations--Justice Kagan, Justice Sotomayor, and Neil Gorsuch, about whom I talked a minute ago. There has been adequate time here relative to other confirmations.

Second, some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are saying they want more documents to review his nomination. I would just make this point: More documents have been produced with regard to Judge Kavanaugh than any other Supreme Court nomination in history. That is what I am told by the Judiciary Committee. Some Democrats have suggested they need to review the literally millions of documents that passed through his office and passed through his desk when he held the job we talked about earlier as Staff Secretary for President George W. Bush.

Again, this is a job that is sort of like the traffic cop. It is not to be substantively giving the President the documents from an agency, department, or other White House policy office, but rather to provide the documents to the President in a timely way to be sure the President is seeing the right documents and to be sure there is coordination. It is the flow of the documents.

So I think seeing all those documents are not relevant, frankly, to the confirmation process because they don't relate to him. What they do relate to, obviously, are a lot of things that have to do with President George W. Bush, which I am sure were very personal documents where the President would write in the margin and so on. That would be interesting for people to look at. People could probably write a book about those things. That is not the purpose here. And that is why I think it is a fishing expedition to say: Let's see millions of documents that passed through this guy's desk, particularly in the context of a confirmation where more documents are being provided than any previous confirmation.

I was told by the Judiciary Committee this morning that 430,000 pages of documents are being produced. I don't know how many of my colleagues are going to read through 430,000 pages of documents, but they are free to do so. By the way, this compares to 170,000 pages of documents that were produced with regard to former Solicitor General Elena Kagan's confirmation. Think about that: 430,000 versus 170,000.

Elena Kagan also served as a senior aide in the White House. She worked for President Clinton. She had a senior position there--a substantive position, actually--in domestic policy. She also, of course, was the Solicitor General of the United States--yet 430,000 versus 170,000. I just hope people keep that in mind when they hear about the documents.

What is really relevant to me is what he has done as a judge. He has spent 12 years on the DC Circuit Court, which is viewed by most as being the second highest court in the land. He has a lot of documents that are related to that. He has authored more than 300 published opinions. Clearly, these opinions are relevant. By the way, more than a dozen of his opinions on the Circuit Court have been endorsed by the Supreme Court, which is an unusually high number and a testament to his outstanding judicial record.

In addition to the more than 10,000 pages of published opinions he authored or joined, out of the 430,000 pages of documents I mentioned, the Judiciary Committee tells me they have released more than 176,000 pages of appropriate documents from Judge Kavanaugh's time in the executive branch. So there are plenty of documents to look at. I encourage my colleagues to do so.

As I said earlier, based on the traditions that we have here and on the amount of time spent between nomination and confirmation and based on the number of documents that have been produced, I think it has been an appropriate and transparent process. I am glad Chairman Grassley has made it so.

My hope is that from his time on the bench and his time in the executive branch, both of these documents will be reviewed--the appropriate ones.

Brett Kavanaugh is very well respected as a judge. He is the thought leader among his peers. I am sure you have heard a lot about that. There have been op-eds written about him from Democrats and Republicans alike saying: I know the guy. I clerked with the guy. I worked with the guy. I was one of his students. He is smart. He is thoughtful.

He has said very clearly that he will be guided by the Constitution and the rule of law. He understands that the proper role of the Court is not to legislate from the bench. He has respect for precedent. He actually wrote the book, meaning he is one of the coeditors of this book looking at legal precedent and what they call stare decisis. He is someone who is very much in the mainstream of legal thought and very well regarded.

His former colleagues, his current colleagues, his former students, and legal experts on both sides of the aisle have come out to say this about him. I think he has exactly the right qualifications, extensive experience, and a judicial philosophy that most Americans agree with and would want in a judge.

Again, as important as that is to me, he is also a good person. He is compassionate. He is humble. He is someone who has a big heart. Maybe, most importantly, he has the humility to be able to listen, to hear people out. As I said earlier, there is no more important a quality in a Supreme Court Justice given the incredibly important issues they have before them.

So, as his confirmation process continues, I hope my colleagues and the American people will get to know the Brett Kavanaugh that I know. I hope he is soon able to continue his lifetime of distinguished service as a member of the highest Court in the land. I am proud to strongly support his nomination for this important position.

I yield back my time.