Rob Portman

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, on rollcall vote No. 53, I voted yea. It was my intention to vote nay. Therefore, I ask unanimous consent that I be permitted to change my vote since it will not affect the outcome.

Mr. PORTMAN. Madam President, I want to start by commending the Presiding Officer and Senator Cantwell for getting this bill to the floor. They say the third time is the charm. I think this may be the fourth or the fifth time. But I will say that I marvel, Senator Cantwell and Senator Murkowski, at your patience and your persistence. You have never lost sight of the goal, which is to actually move legislation that will help us create jobs, make our economy more efficient, as Senator Cantwell has said, and improve our energy policies at a time when we are desperate to be able to address some of the new changes we see in our economy and in our energy situation in particular. So thank you for your persistence. I also want to commend you and thank you for including as title I of this legislation the energy efficiency legislation, the Portman-Shaheen energy efficiency legislation that we just talked about. Senator Shaheen is here on the floor with me. I hope she will talk about this bill in a second. This is something we worked on a long time--I think over 5 years now. It is an opportunity for us as a body to actually move forward with sensible legislation that makes our Federal Government more efficient and our factories more efficient, as Senator Cantwell has talked about. It improves our ability to create jobs and to be able to be more energy independent. It is the kind of win-win legislation that we do too seldom around here. It is an opportunity for us today to send a strong message to the House that we would like to move broad energy efficiency legislation. Hopefully, we can get it to the President's desk for signature and move it ahead. There are two parts of the Energy Savings and Industrial Competitiveness Act. That is our legislation that has already been passed by this Chamber. Those two parts have been signed by the President. They are at work now. I will say that already they are helping to allow individuals to use less energy and, therefore, have more savings. That lets companies to be more efficient, to create more jobs, and to reduce emissions. Now it is time to pass this remaining part of the legislation, the main part of the legislation which includes bipartisan reforms that we are taking up today. It is about time we get these across the finish line. The priority I have had here in the Senate has been on jobs and wages. That is exactly what this legislation does. It is really a jobs bill, among other things. According to a recent study of our legislation, the Portman- Shaheen bill, by 2030 it will help create nearly 200,000 new jobs and help the economy by saving consumers about $16.7 billion in reduced energy costs. So this is legislation about energy, but it is also about our economy and jobs. By the way, when we started this legislation, it was the Shaheen-Portman legislation. It has remained a totally bipartisan--even nonpartisan--effort. Our workers in Ohio and in the States represented in this Chamber are competing with countries all over the world. If you think about it, a lot of these companies that are in other places, strictly in Europe and Japan, are very energy efficient. That gives them an advantage. It makes it harder for us to be able to add jobs here to be able to compete because their costs are lower and their profits are up. So part of this legislation is strongly supported by the manufacturers in this country because they know that, by making our plants more energy efficient, we are going to give our workers in Ohio and around the country and our companies a competitive advantage. So that is one thing that is very important about this legislation. This will help us to be able to compete in a global economy. It also creates more jobs to have more supply of energy. So it is not just that we are being more efficient, which is very good, but I will say that in this legislation we are also encouraging more production, including energy infrastructure that the chairman talked about earlier. So my view is very simple. We should be producing more and using less. That combination really works for our economy. Over the last 7 years on the ``produce more'' side, we have been in the midst really of an energy production renaissance. This is because of new advances in technology. It has dramatically changed the productivity and output of American energy companies. I am talking about everything. I am talking about solar and wind. I am talking about hydro. I am certainly talking about natural gas with fracking. I am also talking about oil and coal. We have become the world super power in energy--the world super power in energy. This is good for our country. This is good for all of us as consumers. With lower energy costs now, it is good for the competitiveness of our economy. But it is also a change. So the underlying legislation here-- the broad legislation--is very important because our economy and our energy situation are very different than they were the last time we reformed energy laws. That is why we need this broader legislation in my view. It does have some needed changes, including bringing our permitting process up to speed, our regulations up to the times, and, again, dealing with some of the other issues with regard to our energy sector, which has been talked about this afternoon. Just as it makes sense to produce more, it makes sense to use less, to eliminate some of the waste in our energy system, to make it more efficient. Production and efficiency are totally complementary. By improving energy efficiency again, our jobs bill here will actually create more economic growth and create more opportunities for Ohioans. The Portman-Shaheen bill will also strengthen our national security. Why do I say that? Well, it makes us more energy independent. That is critical. We are already doing this through some means, but if we can get this legislation passed, we will be doing it through better energy efficiency as well. The bill helps clean our environment. By some estimates, passing Portman-Shaheen will have an impact on our carbon emissions, the equivalent to taking 20 million cars off the road over the next 15 years. So it does have an impact in terms of dealing with the emissions issue. I am a really strong supporter of finding solutions that actually help the environment, help the economy, and help create jobs. Well, this is that sweet spot here. This legislation is a classic example. Our bill also provides a model for how to ensure that we can do it without a lot of new job-destroying mandates or regulations. There are no mandates in this legislation. There are lots of incentives for the private sector, but we try to make the Federal Government, in this legislation, a better partner, rather than a better task master. Again, I think that is the sweet spot. One thing it does is it makes the Federal Government practice what it preaches. So it says to the Federal Government: You are the largest energy user in the world. You are far from efficient. Can't we do a better job in the Federal Government by having the Federal Government lead by example? It does this at the State and local level by updating building codes for government building, providing grants for retrofitting hospitals, youth centers, and faith-based organizations with energy efficiency improvements. It would get rid of some of the duplicative green building programs that are at the Department of Energy, to make sure those are working better, are more consolidated. It establishes a Federal smart building program to conduct research and development on smart building technology, which was talked about by Senator Cantwell a moment ago. There is a huge opportunity here because 40 percent of our energy use is in our buildings. It would codify in statute that Federal agencies must reduce their energy intensity 2.5 percent per year over the next decade. So it codifies some of what is already in place as that goes forward. As I have said, this bill does not impose new burdens on Americans, rather it creates incentives and helps small and medium-sized manufacturers to access smart manufacturing technology by establishing rebates for upgrading electric motors and transformers, by funding career field training for students receiving a certificate for installing energy efficient building technologies, one of the skills gaps we have right now in our economy that need to be closed for us to take advantage of these new energy efficiency technologies. Rather than the Federal Government telling companies what to do under this bill, the Federal Government helps them to become more efficient. It is not just American companies. Portman-Shaheen would help everyone. Particularly, it would help low-income Americans be able to retrofit their homes to be more energy efficient, which will save them money on their energy bills. With the middle-class squeeze that is out there, what we see right now is wages that are not just flat, but they have declined on average over the last several years. Expenses are up, including health care expenses and including, in many cases, energy expenses, including in my home State of Ohio, where we have more and more pressure on our electricity costs. This will help in terms of dealing with that middle- class squeeze. For people just trying to get by, a low energy bill can be a real relief, and a few dollars at the end of each month can then be used for a needed expenditure, for savings, maybe for investment in a kid's college education or for retirement. Finally, our bill does reauthorize the Weatherization Assistance Program, which establishes building training and assessment centers at institutions of higher education around the country, which is also very important toward this efficiency of buildings. The Portman-Shaheen legislation is now supported by more than 260 associations, businesses, and advocacy groups, from the National Association of Manufacturers to the Sierra Club, from the Alliance to Save Energy to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. These are some strange bedfellows, I will tell you. You normally don't see these groups coming together to support legislation on the floor of the Senate. But I think it shows that this is a consensus win for taxpayers, for workers, and for the environment. I was really pleased to work with Senator Shaheen, Ranking Member Cantwell, and Leader McConnell to offer a bipartisan amendment to this broader bill that is supposed to clarify a Department of Energy efficiency standard related to external power supply drivers. The existing standards are overly broad. Again, this is another amendment we are going to be offering today, and another case where we are able to bring all parties to the table and negotiate a compromise fix to an urgent problem. I am hopeful that will soon be adopted, and it will provide an effective, bipartisan solution. Again, I want to thank Senator Shaheen for her persistence and her patience with regard to our energy efficiency bill and for being a great partner from the start. This is not the precise bill that she would have written or that I would have written, but it is one that finds that common ground, that consensus to be able to move our country forward with regard to energy efficiency. I also want to mention an amendment I offered with Senator Cantwell and Chairman Murkowski to this broader legislation that is beneficial to our environment and will help the National Park Service, and this is the centennial legislation. As some of you know, 2016 is a big year for the parks. This is the park's centennial, the 100th year. In fact, this week is National Park Week. What better time is there for us to be adopting this amendment? The National Parks Service turns 100 years old on August 25. We want to make sure that the National Parks Service is well positioned for its next century. In Ohio, 2.6 million people visit our 13 national parks sites every year. So you might not think of Ohio as being a big national park State. It is. We are blessed to have these sites that preserve and protect the national beauty of our State. We are grateful for the National Parks Service and for their custodianship and their stewardship of treasures like the Cuyahoga Valley National Park, one of the top 10 parks in the country in terms of visitation, and also of about 4,000 or so Ohio sites on the National Register of Historic Places. Our amendment would officially set up two funds to help the National Park Service be more effective going forward to help them have more funds to able to address some of the challenges they face and to start, particularly, to address the backlog of projects that need to be completed. But first it would officially authorize the National Park Centennial Challenge Fund, which is already leveraged with about 25 million bucks in appropriated dollars to an additional $45 million in private sector money--matching funds--to finance signature projects and programs of the National Park System. I think this is part of our answer to our national park shortfall and to the backlog, particularly the maintenance backlog at the parks; that is, to get more private sector interest. It is out there. This is a vehicle for that to happen. The second would be a nonprofit second century endowment fund at National Park Foundation to reduce the $10 billion in National Park Service projects. This would present another opportunity to leverage the willingness of the private sector to help address this backlog that the National Park Service faces. It is a win-win for the taxpayer and for all those who enjoy our national parks and all of our treasures. Finally, it creates a new National Park Service education program to help further the educational mission of our parks. The parks are being well attended right now. Attendance is up. People are excited about the parks. It is a great time for us to pass this centennial legislation. I know there is comparable legislation on the House side. I am sure we can get this to the President--to his desk for signature. We can help to ensure that our parks, for the next 100 years, continue to grow and continue to provide this incredible experience for all of our constituents. This amendment is another example of where we have come together in a bipartisan basis to do this. I want to thank again Senator Cantwell for her work on this and Senator Murkowski for putting it in this legislation. Finally, I am really pleased that we were able to include the Land and Conservation Fund's permanency in this legislation and also the sportsmen's bill in this legislation, to expand and ensure access to public lands for hunting and fishing. The bottom line is that I encourage everybody to vote for this bill, Republicans and Democrats alike. This is a good bill. It is a bill that will drive infrastructure investments in my State of Ohio and around the country. It will protect the grid from cyber and physical attacks. It will allow more exports of liquefied natural gas, which is good for our economy. It will make our Federal Government more efficient. It will make our economy more efficient. It creates jobs. It helps clean up the environment. It helps modernize our government. To me, that constitutes a victory for all of us. I congratulate Senator Cantwell and Senator Murkowski for getting this to the floor. I look forward to its passage later on today. I yield back my time, and I hope my colleague from New Hampshire will have the opportunity to speak.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I rise once again to talk about the urgency of our passing the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act in the House of Representatives. This is legislation that passed the Senate with a 94-to-1 vote about a month ago. In fact, the Senator from Minnesota, who just spoke, Ms. Klobuchar, is one of the four original cosponsors of this legislation. She is one of those who feels so passionately about it, along with Senator Whitehouse and Senator Ayotte. When this came bill came up for a vote, all but one Senator said that this is important, it is urgent, and we need to address it. Passing it in the Senate with that kind of a vote meant that the House of Representatives would likely take it up quickly, partly because over the last 3 years we worked with the House. We didn't just make this bipartisan, we made it nonpartisan. We didn't just make it a Senate project, we made it a House-Senate project. It was bicameral. We introduced the same legislation in the Senate that they introduced in the House. I believe there are 119 cosponsors of that bill in the House. It has been subject to a lot of hearings over here. It has been subject to five different summits here in Washington, DC. We brought experts from all over the country to tell us what to do. We don't have all the best ideas here in Washington, so we got the ideas from around the country. One reason the legislation got this strong vote of 94 to 1 in the Senate is that it does address the problems people see in their communities. I want the House to act on this because it is so urgent. This legislation will help right away in terms of helping to prevent drug abuse, helping young people to make the right decisions, and helping people get into treatment and recovery which is evidence-based and works, rather than people overdosing and dying from this heroin and prescription drug epidemic. It has been more than a month since we voted on this bill in the Senate. Every day it is estimated that 120 Americans die from drug overdoses. That means we have lost more than 3,800 Americans to drug overdoses since the legislation passed the Senate. We can't wait. We have to move, and we have to move quickly on this because it is an epidemic. The experts say that from 2000 to 2014, the rate of overdose deaths doubled, leaving nearly half a million Americans dead from drug overdoses. That is why we call it an epidemic. In Ohio alone, we have lost 160 Ohioans since the Senate passed CARA. Since 2007, drug overdoses have killed more Ohioans than car accidents. Car accidents used to be the No. 1 cause of accidental deaths in Ohio, and now it is drug overdoses. It is probably true in your State too. According to the Centers for Disease Control, CDC, Ohio now has the fifth highest overdose death rate in the country--top five, not something to be proud of. Statewide, overdose deaths more than tripled from 1999 to 2010. We have been told that over 200,000 Ohioans are addicted to opioids right now. It is not slowing down. Unfortunately, this crisis continues, and therefore our response cannot slow down. In fact, it needs to speed up. Washington is not going to solve this problem. It will be solved in our communities back home, but we can help. We can be better partners, and that is what the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act, CARA, does. It makes Washington a better partner to be able to save lives. Last week I talked about how it is affecting one of our cities in Ohio--Cleveland, OH. I would like to update everybody here and my colleagues in the House about what is happening in Cleveland, OH. From March 10, which was the day we passed CARA, to March 27, the latest date for which we have statistics, 29 people died from overdoses, and that is in one 17-day period in one city. Over the course of one long weekend during that period, eight men and four women died of overdoses. During one long weekend in one city, 12 Ohioans overdosed, which included a 21-year-old and a 64-year-old. Some of the victims were White, some of the victims were African American, some of the victims were from the suburbs, and some of the victims from were from the inner city. This is affecting all ages, all races, all backgrounds, and all ZIP Codes. Some of you may have heard the story of Jeremy Wilder. He is from Portsmouth, OH, one of the areas that is hardest hit in Ohio. In Portsmouth, OH, we had a townhall meeting 6 years ago. I brought in the drug czar and law enforcement officials to deal with the prescription drug epidemic that was exploding at that point. As we made more progress on prescription drugs, heroin started to come in, which is a cheaper alternative, and unfortunately more and more people got into the grip of that heroin addiction. Jeremy Wilder of Portsmouth, OH, said he became addicted to heroin and sold drugs to pay for his own use. He told National Public Radio this: I sold dope to cops, I sold dope to lawyers, I sold dope to doctors. I had a cop that used to drive me to my drug connection--rich kids. I had two good friends that were very wealthy, and because of their addiction, their parents have nothing today because their children just drained them. That was on National Public Radio. There is no demographic, no State, no city, no county that is safe from this epidemic. One of the big issues we have now in Ohio is heroin laced with what is called fentanyl, which is an even more powerful drug. In 2013, five people in Cleveland died of overdoses of fentanyl, which we are told is up to 100 times more potent than heroin, depending on the fentanyl. In 2014, that number increased by more than 700 percent. So from 2013 to 2014, a 700-percent increase to 37 people dying. Last year, by the way, that number more than doubled to 89 people dying of fentanyl overdoses. Over the weekend--4 weeks after the Senate passed CARA--in the middle of the day, a man overdosed and died at a McDonald's in a suburban community outside of Cleveland in front of a lot of people, and there was a lot of media coverage as a result. In Franklin County, annual overdose deaths have nearly quadrupled in the last decade. In Toledo, we lost 214 people to overdoses last year--a 50-percent increase in just 1 year. We think now that some 10,000 people in the area are addicted to heroin or opioids. People in Akron have been heartbroken over the story of Andrew Frye. Andrew's mom was a heroin addict. Andrew, his mom, and his grandmother all did heroin. Last week, Andrew's mom found him dead at the age of 16 in a Summit County hotel room. That was his last week, 16 years old. Summit County, by the way, where Akron is located, has seen its overdose death rate double in just 5 years. I think we get the picture. This is clearly a growing epidemic. It is a problem that must be addressed. As I have said, no ZIP Code, no congressional district is safe from this threat. In Ohio, we understand that. Just in the last few weeks, there have been summits on this issue in Cincinnati, in Middletown, in Cedarville, OH. Again, suburban, rural, and inner city communities are all affected. On March 23, nearly 2 weeks after CARA passed, the Franklin County coroner, Dr. Anahi Ortiz, convened the Franklin County Opiate Crisis Summit. She says she has seen children as young as 14 die of drug overdoses. She has seen toddlers and seniors alike die of overdoses as the coroner in that community. There is a sense of urgency across Ohio about this, a sense that it has gotten out of control. It is in the headlines. People understand it. Washington could use that sense of urgency too. Communities are taking action. Ohio is taking action. Other States are taking action. The Senate has taken action by a 94-to-1 vote. That means it is now time for the House of Representatives to take action. Right now, the House version of CARA has 113 cosponsors. This bill was written together with us, on a bipartisan, bicameral basis, to ensure that we could get this legislation through to the President for signature and get it out to our communities to begin helping to avoid not just these overdose deaths but all the dislocations occurring because of this epidemic, all the families and all the communities that are being torn apart and devastated. Prosecutors in Ohio told me 80 percent of crime is related to this opiate addiction issue. I know the House majority leader has said he wants the House to take on this drug epidemic and pass legislation sometime this month. I appreciate that, and I know he is sincere. I watched the Republican weekly address by Congressman Bob Dold of Illinois. He did a very good job. It is clear to me that he is passionate about this issue, and I appreciate his advocacy on behalf of those who need our help. But I would say that I didn't notice any hearings or markups this week. We passed this legislation in the Senate. It has been subject to all kinds of scrutiny and hearings, and it passed with a 94-to-1 vote. Are there other ideas? Of course there are, and that is fine. But we know these ideas work: better prevention; better education; more people in treatment and in recovery that is actually evidenced-based, and it works; helping police officers to have the Narcan they need to save lives--this miracle drug that can stop an overdose from turning into a death; helping to ensure that prescription drugs are taken off the bathroom shelves; stopping this overprescribing by having a drug- monitoring program because most people who are hooked on heroin started with prescription drugs. We know these things. This legislation does this. It provides around $80 million in additional funding going forward. That funding is needed, again, to be a partner with State and local governments and nonprofits, not to take their place. We know this. Let's get this legislation passed. Let's move this legislation separately. It can be sent to the President's desk next week. We can begin to make progress now. If there are other ideas, that is great; send them over here and we will work on them. We will work on our own ideas. There is always more to do on this issue. Unfortunately, there is always more to do. We know the bill we passed here works. We know it is bicameral, and we know it has cosponsorship in the House to be able to get it done. We hope the House will simply put CARA on the floor, pass it by a large bipartisan margin, just as the Senate did, and get it to the President's desk for his signature. This is close to being a historic achievement for this Congress and, much more importantly, for the American people. It is really one vote away--one vote away--on the floor of the House of Representatives. I will tell my colleagues why it is going to pass. It is going to pass because Senators from every State in the Union representing every single congressional district supported this bill. It has the support, more importantly, from groups all over the country, including 130 different organizations, stakeholders, the people who represent those who are in the trenches dealing with treatment, in the trenches dealing with prevention. Our law enforcement community--the Fraternal Order of Police, the National Sheriffs' Association--they all endorse this legislation. These groups understand what is needed, and they want this help now. This is a unique opportunity for us to move forward. In this political year, in this partisan atmosphere, this is one issue that should not have any partisanship to it at all. It should just get done. Senator Whitehouse and I crafted this legislation together, again working with others in the Chamber, as we talked about earlier. We drafted it with a lot of different stakeholders from around the country, holding five forums on various aspects of this debate. These forums were here in Washington, but we brought in experts from all over the country, knowing that is where the best ideas are going to be. The best practices around the country are represented in the legislation. We have done this. We have done the factfinding. We have consulted with the experts--with the doctors, law enforcement, the patients in recovery, with the drug experts in the Obama administration, including the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, including the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Justice. We brought in people from all over, and they agree that this is where we can make progress and make progress now. That work is important. It should not be ignored. But much more important is the fact that people out there are waiting for us. They are waiting for us to act. Thousands of veterans, pregnant women, and first responders are waiting because this legislation affects all of them. Every single one of these groups would benefit from CARA, and they want it now. Think about the peace of mind we could give parents by expanding prevention and educational efforts to prevent prescription and opioid abuse and the use of heroin so that their kids don't make that tragic mistake of experimenting one time--one time-- which is sometimes all it takes. CARA could give them some peace of mind. CARA would increase drug disposal sites to keep these medications-- these prescription drugs and pain killers--from getting into the wrong hands. We are already told by the Centers for Disease Control that the amount of prescription opioids sold in the United States nearly quadrupled since 1999; yet there has not been an overall change in the amount of pain Americans report. So how do we explain this dramatic increase in prescriptions? Some of these drugs are being abused, or sold on the street to addicts. A survey in 2013 found that 4.5 million Americans use opioids for nonmedical purposes. CARA would help make sure that prescription drugs don't get into the wrong hands. And set up the drug-monitoring program to better know who is getting these drugs and why and be able to stop the inappropriate use. CARA would create law enforcement task forces to combat heroin and methamphetamine and expand the availability of naloxone and Narcan to our law enforcement and first responders. They know how important that is. They know that if they had more training and more availability, they could save more lives. Again, that is why law enforcement, including the Fraternal Order of Police, supports this legislation. Thank God we have them out there. If you talk to your police officers and firefighters, you will find that they are doing this work every single day. They are intervening and saving lives every single day in your community. They know that this addiction epidemic is driving lots of other crime too. It causes thefts, violence, and human trafficking. Last month in Columbus, I met with a group of trafficking victims. These were women. They all told me the same thing, which is that their pimps, their traffickers, got them hooked on heroin and then trafficked them, and in each case they were trafficked on this Web site: backpage.com. This drug issue and human trafficking are definitely related. We are told by law enforcement that so much of the crime--the majority of the crime in our State has been driven by this drug addiction. There are so many heartbreaking stories, but there are also stories of hope. I have heard them firsthand. I have met people who have been in recovery, who have made it through to the other side. So part of what this legislation is saying is that this addiction issue is an illness. Addiction is an illness and, like other illnesses, needs to be treated that way. It is a disease. But also, part of our legislation is saying that there is hope. We have seen where treatment and recovery that is evidenced-based can work to get people's lives back on track, to bring families back together. I have heard so many stories. I was in a treatment center in Athens, OH, a couple of weeks ago meeting with women who are now reunited with their children for the first time in years because they have taken the brave and courageous step to get into treatment. This grip of addiction is very difficult. It is very difficult to escape from, but they have done it. They are now in long-term recovery. They are back at work. They have the dignity and self-respect that come with taking care of their family and being at work. On March 29, 19 days after we passed CARA, the President spoke at the National Prescription Drug Abuse and Heroin Summit in Atlanta, GA. At that summit we heard from Crystal Oertle of Shelby, OH. She told her story of trying Vicodin because someone offered it to her. She became addicted because she tried it once. Eventually she needed something stronger and stronger, and pills weren't always available and they were more expensive. Heroin was more readily available and cheaper, so she started using heroin. She would drive an hour to Columbus, OH, with her 2-year-old daughter every day to get her heroin. Her addiction drove her to theft. Her family supported her and begged her to get help. She is now being treated. She is more than 1 year sober. She is part of an outreach program, the Urban Minorities Alcohol and Abuse Outreach Program. She is taking opiate blockers, drugs that actually block the effects of opiates. This is exciting new medication. She is getting counseling. She is part of a support group with other people in treatment. It is working. It is working for her, and it is working for many other Americans. She is dedicating herself to eliminating the stigma around addiction to get more people to step forward and to get into treatment because she knows that if you treat addiction like other diseases, it will have an impact on that stigma, more people will come forward, and more people will be able to get their lives back on track. There is hope. Addiction is treatable. We are told that 9 out of 10 people who need treatment aren't getting it. Again, this is one reason CARA is so important: It will get more people into treatment. As I said before, I take the House leadership at their word when they say they would like to move this legislation and move it through regular order. I understand that, but I will say this: They need to move and they need to move quickly because of the urgency of this issue, because of the fact that in their communities and in the communities represented here on the Senate floor, which is every community in America--every single State here has a U.S. Senator who supports this legislation. People are waiting. They need the help. We can provide the help. We can make the Federal Government a better partner. We can deal with this crisis. I am going to do everything in my power to protect the people of Ohio, even if that means continuing to come out here on the floor every week and continuing to do everything I can, including making calls, as I did yesterday, over to the House of Representatives; including talking to my colleagues personally; and including telling some of these stories I have told today. People's lives are at stake. We have to move this legislation. We need to get it to the President's desk. He will sign it. And it can then begin to make a real difference for the families we represent who are so affected by this epidemic. Thank you, Mr. President. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I rise today to urge my colleagues in the House of Representatives to pass the legislation we passed here in the Senate a few weeks ago called the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act, or CARA. We passed it on March 10, which was 27 days ago--almost a month. It is estimated that we lose about 120 Americans every day to drug overdoses. That means that during that time period--those 27 days--we lost about 3,240 additional Americans who we represent to substance abuse and death from heroin and prescription drug overdoses. Since 2007, drug overdoses have killed more people in Ohio than any other cause of accidental death, even surpassing car accidents. It is probably true nationally now as well. Addiction is treatable, but 9 out of 10 people who need treatment aren't getting it. That is a tragedy. It shows that the system we have right now just isn't working, and that is what our legislation addresses, among other things. In one 5-day span since we passed CARA, just in the last month, we had five people die from heroin and Fentanyl overdoses in one of the cities I represent-- Cleveland, OH. I was in Athens, OH, more than 2 weeks after we passed CARA, and received a tour of the Rural Women's Addiction Recovery Bassett House facility. Dr. Joe Gay and Ruth Tarter took me around so I could meet some of the brave women who stepped forward to treat their addiction issues. Some of them were there with their kids. They have an amazing success rate. I will tell you that 3 days after I left Athens, OH, $40,000 of heroin was seized at a traffic stop very close to this treatment facility. It is everywhere. It knows no ZIP code. It is in rural areas, suburban areas, and inner cities. States are starting to take action. Ohio is taking action, your States are taking action, and communities are taking action. Local leaders know this is a problem, but they want the Federal Government to be a better partner. That is what CARA provides. It provides best practices from around the country. It provides more funding for some critical elements that are evidence- based--based on research and what actually works. Our States and local communities are desperate for this right now. By the way, this legislation is not just bipartisan. It is also bicameral. In other words, not only have Republicans and Democrats worked across the aisle here in the Senate over the last 3 years putting this bill together, but our colleagues in the House have worked together as well. I am encouraged by the fact that the CARA legislation in the House has 113 cosponsors. It is bipartisan. It is based on good evidence. It is based on a lot of work and effort. Today I heard through a media account that one of the House leaders said there is interest in moving something even this month. That is great. But he also talked about hearings and markups and so on. Let's be sure the hearings and markups don't delay what we know we should do, which is to pass the CARA legislation. It has been bicameral and bipartisan. It passed the Senate with a 94-to-1 vote. That never happens around here-- 94 to 1. This is legislation which we know will make a difference right now in our communities that are dealing with a crisis we all face. Let's move this legislation. I say to my friends in the House with all due respect, this legislation has been carefully crafted and we have done the hard work. I mentioned that we spent 3 years of factfinding on this bill. We didn't think we had all the right answers, so we went out to experts all over the country. We took time to listen. We consulted with them. We listened to experts, doctors, law enforcement, and patients in recovery. We listened to the drug experts in the Obama administration, such as the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, ONDCP. They have been very helpful. We brought in people from Health and Human Services and listened to them. We brought in people from my home State of Ohio and other States around the country. We heard from family members, many of whom have channelled their grief at losing a loved one into advocacy for the CARA legislation because they know it is going to help. One testified in the Judiciary Committee when we marked up the legislation. Tonda DaRe from Carrollton, OH, talked about having lost her daughter, who was a very successful high school student and engaged to be married. Everything was going great. When she turned 21, she made a mistake: She tried heroin. She went into recovery. She relapsed. She ended up dying of an overdose. Unfortunately, this is a story that is retold all over our country. There are moms, there are dads, there are aunts and uncles and brothers and sisters who come forward to tell us these tragic stories about losing a loved one. They want this legislation to pass because they know it is going to help another family member or a friend or a coworker or someone whom they have never met but whom they want to help so they don't have to go through the grief they have gone through. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse--a Democrat--and I have worked on this legislation together, along with many other people in this Chamber. We have also worked, as I said, with many on the House side. We worked with folks on both sides of the aisle and both sides of the Capitol because this has become an issue that affects us all. It is a nonpartisan issue. We have to move it forward. We held five forums here in Washington, DC, and brought in experts to get counsel and advice. They helped us develop a legislative proposal that was thoughtful because it actually addressed the real problem. In April 2014, we had a forum on the criminal justice system which included alternatives to incarceration, and you will see that in our legislation. The notion is, for users who get arrested for possession, let's not just throw them in jail because that hasn't worked. Let's get them into treatment and get them into a recovery program that works. In July 2014, we held a forum on how women are impacted by this drug epidemic, looking particularly at addiction and treatment responses. Some new data that is out there now shows that most of the people who are suffering from heroin and prescription drug addiction are women. In December 2014, we held a forum on the science of addiction--how we could get at this from a medical point of view, how we could come up with better medical approaches to this to be able to stop the craving, to deal with the addiction problem, to get people through withdrawal. We also talked about how to address some of the collateral consequences of addiction. In April of 2015, we held a forum on our youth and how we can better promote drug prevention. After all, keeping people from getting into the funnel of addiction in the first place has to be a priority. To help people avoid going down that funnel of addiction, we need better prevention, better education. That is part of our legislation. We also had input about what is working in recovery and what is not working in recovery. We held a forum in July of 2015 to talk about our veterans, to talk about the very sad situation with veterans who are coming back to our shores who have PTSD--post-traumatic stress disorder--and who have brain injuries. Some recent data shows that about 20 percent of returning veterans with those issues are becoming addicted to prescription drugs or heroin; therefore, veterans courts are a major part of our legislation. These are drug courts that are focused on mental health and addiction specifically for our veterans. I have seen them in Ohio. They are working great. It is unbelievable. I talked to a guy who has been in and out of the system his whole life. He is about 45 years old now. He finally found this court that was going to help him--took him out of jail and got him into treatment. Hanging over his head was the possibility of incarceration if he didn't do the right thing and stay clean. He is now a senior at Ohio State University and is about to get his degree, and he reunited with his family for the first time in many years. He is clean. It can work. The final result was the legislative text that reflected this open and deliberative process I am talking about. This bill--just like the research it supports--is evidence-based. We didn't ask who had the idea; we just asked whether it was a good idea. It is no wonder that CARA now has support from 130 national groups, from the Fraternal Order of Police, to stakeholders in public health-- doctors and nurses, those in recovery, experts in the field, people who actually know what is going on because they are in the trenches working on this. They want this bill passed. They know it will help them and help them now. As I said, that vote was 94 to 1, which means 94 Senators say this bill is ready to go. These are Senators from every State in the Union who support this legislation, therefore representing every congressional district in the United States of America. It makes sense. It expands prevention and educational efforts to prevent opiate abuse, the use of heroin and prescription drugs. It increases drug-disposal sites to get medications out of people's hands and get it into the right hands. It takes this medication off the bathroom shelves. It has a drug-monitoring program to get at the overprescribing issue. So many people who are currently addicted to heroin started with prescription drugs. In fact, the majority did. There is different data out there, but it is very clear that prescription drugs are a huge part of heroin addiction. It also authorizes law enforcement task forces to combat heroin and meth. Law enforcement has an important role to play here. It expands training and the availability of naloxone, or Narcan, to law enforcement. This is for our firefighters. When you go to a firehouse in your State--for those listening in the House, in your district--ask them: Are you going on more fire runs or are you going on more runs to help people with overdoses? They will tell you what they tell me: overdoses. That is what it has come to. That is happening in your fire department in your community. By the way, to tell you how much this law can make a difference-- because we do help get the training for them to be able to use Narcan and get the Narcan or naloxone into the right hands--Ohio public safety officials have administered naloxone over 16,000 times since 2015-- 16,000 overdoses that might otherwise have resulted in death. For the most part, this miracle drug works. First responders know how important it is. That is why the Fraternal Order of Police supports this bill. They want to equip their officers, but so do the firefighters. CARA also supports recovery programs, including those focused on youth and building communities of recovery. To avoid people getting into addiction in the first place, it also creates a national task force on recovery because there is a lot of information out there we need to bring together to find out what works and what doesn't work precisely in terms of dealing with the collateral consequences imposed by addiction. CARA expands treatment for pregnant women who struggle with addiction and provides support for babies who suffer from what is called neonatal abstinence syndrome. What does that mean? That means babies who are born addicted. In Ohio, tragically, we had a 750-percent increase in the number of babies born with addiction in the last 12 years. I have been to the hospitals. I have been to St. Rita's in Lima. I have been to Rainbow Babies in Cleveland. I have been to Cincinnati Children's Hospital. I have seen these babies. These are tiny babies who are addicted, and they have to be taken through withdrawal. The compassionate nurses and doctors who are doing it--God bless them--I asked them: What is going to happen to these babies? They told me: Rob, we don't know. We don't know the long-term consequences because it is so new. But it is dramatic and it is happening in all of your hospitals. These neonatal units are now taking on a whole other task, which is helping babies through withdrawal. I visited folks who are not only pregnant but are addicted, and I talked to them about what they are going through and what the consequences are going to be, and it is sad. Many say: Rob, the grip of addiction is so great. I am now in treatment, but I worry about what is going to happen to my baby. We also expand treatment for expectant and postpartum women for that reason. And these expectant and postpartum women who need this help can make the right decision with more help from us. It expands residential treatment programs for pregnant women who are struggling with addiction. It creates a pilot program to provide family-based services to women who are addicted to opiates. CARA also helps veterans, as I said. It allows those veterans to get into a veterans court, where they can get help to walk through how they get out of this addiction, how they get into recovery. They can get support from other veterans around them to provide the kind of help they need to get out of this cycle of incarceration and addiction. What do we say to the 40 million Americans who are struggling with addiction when they ask ``Why don't you guys act?'' The Senate acted 94 to 1. Why can't we get this done? It is time to move. They shouldn't have to wait. We shouldn't have to wait. To those 40 million who struggle, to those who think they can't overcome this addiction, to those who believe there is no one out there to help them, the message is, you are not alone. There is hope. You can beat this. I have seen it. There are people who care and want to help. There are so many heartbreaking stories of addiction, but there are also so many stories of hope. I think about Vanessa Perkins from Nelsonville, OH. Vanessa became addicted to heroin. Once she became addicted, she also became a victim of sex trafficking. Those two are related. In Ohio, they tell me that most sex trafficking has now to do with heroin addiction. In other words, the trafficker gets these women--usually women--addicted to heroin, and that is one way they become dependent on their trafficker. What Vanessa tells me is that it took her a long time to turn her life around, but she was courageous and brave enough to seek treatment, and she is now back on track. For the last 6 years she has been helping others, taking her experience and using it to help others deal with their addiction. She is on the board of a group called Freedom a la Cart, which is a company in Columbus, OH, that I visited last month that provides job opportunities for trafficking victims. They do a heck of a job and teach these women a trade, too--culinary arts. Now so many of these women who had been trafficked, who had been heroin addicts, are back on their feet, reunited with their families, and know the dignity and self-respect that come from the work they are doing and from helping others. There is hope. Treatment can work. Mr. President, leaders in the House say they want to move anti-heroin legislation through regular order. Again, I heard today that one of the leaders said they are planning to take action. I had conversations with Speaker Ryan on this issue. I had conversations with other leaders in the House on it. I take them at their word. I am hopeful we will see the House begin to act next week when that Chamber returns, but I will say this: The House must act, and they must act soon. I am not going to be patient on this. This is urgent, and people's lives are at stake. The House must pass this bill so the President can sign it and so it can begin to make a real difference in the lives of the people we represent. This is our responsibility. We need to take advantage of this opportunity that the Senate has given us by this huge vote--94 to 1--to get this legislation to the President and get it enacted into law. Mr. President, I yield back my time.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. I thank my colleague from New Hampshire. Let me just say I already talked about Senator McCaskill in my remarks, but she has been a terrific partner on this issue and many others. She has a passion for it as a former prosecutor, someone who understands this issue well. I yield all remaining time to Senator McCaskill.

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I yield back the remainder of our time.

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

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Minnesota for her strong support of this resolution today, which again is just enforcing a subpoena that is targeted and focused on information that can help us to be able to legislate in this matter. I hope all of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle will join us in this effort. I also thank her for broader work on this issue, specifically the leadership role she has played as a former prosecutor in trying to get at this problem of sex trafficking online. Senator Klobuchar is absolutely right. The Internet has provided so many wonderful things for our economy and for our society. Yet there is a dark side, isn't there. That dark side is shown as clearly as anywhere with regard to backpage; the fact that this sex trafficking has been made more efficient through the Internet and specifically through this one Web site that contains the vast majority of sex trafficking and commercial sex. Again, I refer you to my comments I made earlier. We talked about the fact that there is a girl who is currently missing. The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children has been trying to find her. They put up posters about her, and recently she appeared on a sex advertisement on backpage. Again, this is more common than you would expect. What made this case even more incredible to me was the backpage actually contained a missing child poster of that same child. So the missing child poster that the national center had put out there for all of us to help find her shows up on backpage.com as an advertisement for this young girl. This poster had the child's real name, real age, real picture, and the date she went missing. Other photos in that ad included topless photos of this girl. She is 16 years old. This is another example of where there is a problem that must be addressed. Our investigation is to create the information for us to be able to legislate wisely on this issue. I see my colleague from New Hampshire has joined us. We wish to hear from her. She is another former attorney general of a State and has been involved in this issue for many years and is an active member of the caucus we talked about earlier to try to combat trafficking. I yield to my colleague, the Senator from New Hampshire, such time as she may need.

Mr. PORTMAN. Madam President, I urge my colleagues to vote yes on this resolution and vindicate the authority of Congress to obtain information necessary for sound legislation to protect the most vulnerable among us. We are going to hear shortly from Senator Claire McCaskill, who has been a partner of mine in this effort from the beginning. This investigation has taken about a year. We have done it thoughtfully and carefully. Again, I wish to express my gratitude to her for her support for the legislation. We wanted to wait until she was back in Congress-- she was home taking care of some important health matters--in order to take up this vote today. I know she will express her own strongly held views on this. I just want to say I hope all of my colleagues--Republicans and Democrats alike--will look at this issue and realize this is an opportunity for us to go on record supporting an investigation that could lead to legislation that can actually help to protect those most vulnerable among us. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. PORTMAN. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I want to thank my colleague from Arizona. He has been a leader on this issue for many years. For people who don't know, Cindy McCain, the wife of the Senator from Arizona, is an international leader on this issue dealing with human trafficking all over the world and also sex trafficking here at home. I appreciate his passion and his commitment to it. As a former chair and a ranking member of this committee, I look to him for counsel and advice on how we conduct ourselves. He has been very helpful in this specific issue, and I thank him. I yield to the Senator from Minnesota for such time as she may consume.

Mr. PORTMAN. Madam President, I rise today in support of S. Res. 377, which is a resolution to enforce a subpoena of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which I chair. I will be joined shortly by my colleague Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri, who is the ranking Democrat on the subcommittee and whom I worked with as a partner on this issue over the past year. This is a subpoena that we issued to a group called backpage-- backpage.com. This resolution is intended to enforce that subpoena. Backpage and its chief executive officer, Carl Ferrer, have not been willing to cooperate with the committee. Unfortunately, we are at the point where we have to seek the enforcement of our subpoena. For nearly a year now, Senator McCaskill and I conducted a bipartisan investigation into the scourge of human trafficking on the Internet with a focus on sex trafficking involving children. In the past 5 years, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children reported an over 800-percent increase in reports of suspected child sex trafficking, an increase the organization has found to be ``directly correlated to the increased use of the internet to sell children for sex.'' They testified before our subcommittee about this. They are the experts. They see this huge increase being related to the Internet. In other words, the destructive crime of sex slavery has moved from the street corner to the smartphone. An adult can now shop for underaged trafficking victims from their computer screen. Sex traffickers are well aware that backpage.com, the biggest one by far, offers them a quick and easy-to-use marketplace to sell children and coerce adults. Here is how the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children spells it out, describing this growing problem at a hearing I chaired late last year: Online classified ad sites such as backpage.com . . . allow [sex traffickers] to remain anonymous, test out new markets, attempt to evade public or law enforcement detection, and easily locate customers to consummate their sale of children for sex. Online sex trafficking also enables traffickers to easily update an existing ad with a new location and quickly move the child to another geographic location where there are more customers seeking to purchase a child for rape or sexual abuse. This is from the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. As cochair of the Senate Caucus to End Human Trafficking, I have spent many hours with those dedicated to fighting this crime and those who are victimized by it. For victims, the toll of sex trafficking is measured in stolen childhoods and painful trauma. For traffickers, it is measured in dollars--often a lot of dollars. It is a problem, I believe, that should command more attention around our country and certainly here in the U.S. Congress. The aim of our investigation is very straightforward. We want to understand how lawmakers, law enforcement, and even private businesses can more effectively combat this serious crime that thrives on the online black market. Traffickers have found refuge in new customers through Web sites that specialize in advertising ``ordinary'' prostitution and lawful escort services. A business called backpage.com is the market leader in that industry, with annual revenues in excess of $130 million last year. Backpage has a special niche: According to one industry analysis in 2013, $8 out of every $10 spent on online commercial sex advertising in the United States goes to backpage.com. The public record indicates that backpage sits at the center of the online black market for sex trafficking. Again, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children has reported that of the suspected child trafficking reports it receives from the public, 71 percent involve backpage. Again, they have said that of the suspected child trafficking reports they receive from the public--and they have a 1-800 number; they get reports from the public--71 percent involve backpage.com. According to a leading anti-trafficking organization called Shared Hope International, ``Service providers working with child sex trafficking victims have reported between 80 percent and 100 percent of their clients have been bought and sold on backpage.com.'' In fact, this organization has documented more than 400 cases in 47 States of children being sex trafficked on backpage.com. Despite all this, backpage executives said they are committed to combatting sex trafficking. The company claims that its internal procedures for reviewing and screening the advertisements ``lead the industry.'' That claim led us to ask a very simple question: What are those industry-leading procedures? If they are so effective in the fight against human trafficking, Congress and other lawmakers ought to know about it. That is why Senator McCaskill and I asked backpage for documents about their ad-screening practices--a process backpage calls ``moderation.'' We also asked for other information about their business practices--fair questions, targeted questions, relevant questions. The company has refused to answer them and refused to cooperate. We then took the next step and issued a subpoena to backpage's CEO, Carl Ferrer, inquiring him to produce documents about backpage's moderation practices, efforts to combat human trafficking, and financial information. The company essentially told us no. Wrapping itself in a privileged First Amendment argument, backpage refuses to produce documents about its business practices and told us that the company refuses to even look for documents--not just that they don't have the documents, but they refuse to even look for them, a clear sign of willful contempt for the Senate's process. That is why we are here today on the floor. Senator McCaskill and I gave backpage every opportunity to cooperate in good faith with our investigation. We carefully considered its objections to the subpoena. We actually issued a 19-page opinion, thoughtfully overruling their objections and directing backpage to comply. They continued to stonewall. In the meantime, our investigation has not stopped. Our investigators and lawyers found a number of third parties and other witnesses who had information about backpage's practices and procedures. Along the way, we discovered that from 2010 to 2012, backpage outsourced much of its screening and, again, this moderation; meaning, looking at these ads coming in, the screening and moderation they outsourced to others, including to workers in India. We obtained emails from the California company that managed those India-based moderators, including emails with backpage's CEO and other executives. These emails are deeply troubling. Our investigation showed that backpage edits advertisements before posting them by removing certain words, certain phrases, certain images. For instance, they might remove a word or image that makes it clear that the sexual services are being offered for money. Then they might post this sanitized version of an ad. While this editing changes nothing about the underlying transaction, it tends to conceal the evidence of illegality. In other words, backpage's editing procedures--far from being an effective anti-trafficking measure--serve to sanitize the ads of the illegal content to the outside viewer. We still don't know the full extent of backpage's editing practices. How much of the illegal conduct--or even the fact that they were selling minors online--was being concealed? Why? Backpage will not tell us. Then there is this email. It tells the moderators what to do if they have doubts about whether a girl advertised on backpage is underage. I am going to quote from this email. It says: If in doubt about underage: The process should for now be to accept the ad . . . however, if you ever find anything that you feel is underage and is more than just suspicious, you can delete the ad. . . . Only delete if you [are] really very sure person is underage. To be clear, we didn't get this information from backpage itself because it refuses to provide it. This came from the contractor. Backpage claims emails like this are protected by the First Amendment, which is not accurate. In November, Senator McCaskill and I released a bipartisan staff report about our investigation and held a hearing to consider what to do about backpage's noncompliance. I encourage Members to take a look at this staff report. It is online. You can find it. By the way, despite being under subpoena, backpage's CEO refused to show up for the hearing we held. Shortly before the hearing date, he simply informed us that he wasn't going to show up. This is something Senator McCaskill and I will continue to focus on. But others did show up for our hearing. We heard testimony from law enforcement, prosecutors, and the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children confirming what we had come to suspect: Backpage is not really an ally in the fight against human trafficking; they said it profits from it. The general counsel of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children told us that it had dozens of meetings with backpage about improving the company's anti-trafficking measures, but those meetings ended because the national center concluded that backpage was ``not engaging in good faith efforts to deter the selling and buying of children for sex on its Web site.'' The national center told us that ``[d]espite backpage's assertions, it was adopting and publicizing only carefully selected sound practices, while resisting recommended substantive measures that would protect more children from being sold for sex . . . on backpage.com.'' For example, the national center noted that backpage did not ``hash'' its photos--a very low-cost technique for comparing digital images that could help identify missing children. The national center also noted that backpage has more stringent rules to post an ad to sell a pet, a motorcycle, or a boat than it does to sell a person. A user is required to submit a verified phone number for selling a hamster but not in placing ads that could involve the sale of a child for sex. Think about that. The human toll of all this is staggering. It is hard to overstate the traumatic effect of a minor being advertised on a daily basis on a site like backpage.com. In a recent lawsuit brought against backpage in Boston, the plaintiff was a 15-year-old girl who had been raped over 1,000 times as a result of being advertised on backpage.com--1,000 times. In the course of our investigation, we also heard some similarly heart-wrenching stories. For example, backpage receives reports from families pleading with it to take down ads of their children. Here is one such email sent to backpage that the national center shared with us. Remember, this is an email from a parent about a child being sent to backpage. It said this: Your Web site has ads featuring our 16-year-old daughter [ ], posing as an escort. She is being pimped out by her old [boyfriend], and she is underage. I have emailed the ad multiple times using your website, but have gotten no response. . . . For God's sake, she's only 16. . . . Stuff like this shouldn't be allowed to happen. This is from a parent pleading. Even after receiving such reports, the national center tells us backpage often does not remove the ad. Instead, the ad remains live on the Web site, which allows the abuse of that child to continue. Imagine as a parent or a grandparent, aunt or uncle, brother or sister feeling helpless in the face of backpage not even being willing to take down an ad of a family member. It is sometimes hard to square backpage's public statements about its business practices with the reality on the ground. For example, the national center recently was searching for a child who was missing--and by the way, still is missing--and found she appeared in a sex advertisement on backpage. Sadly, that is pretty common. What made this case even more incredible was that backpage ad actually contained a missing-child poster of that same child. So the ad advertising sex actually used the missing-child poster of that child. That poster had the child's real name on it, real age, real picture, and the date she went missing. The other pictures in the ad included topless photos. We certainly would like to know what supposedly market-leading screening and moderation procedures missed that one. And that, Madam President, is exactly why we need the documents we have asked for from backpage, documents we have subpoenaed from backpage. Without them, we can't really evaluate how sex trafficking is proliferated in these online marketplaces. We can't really evaluate how Congress can do a better job fighting against this crime. We can't help the many prosecutors at the local level who are trying to stop this practice or the attorneys general around the United States of America who are trying to stop this practice. We can't really help to stop this from happening. To be clear, our purpose is absolutely not to shut down any particular company or to deter protected advertising for lawful services. This is not an attempt to shut down something that is lawful on the Internet, it is an attempt to stop something that is unlawful, and nor are we even looking for information about individual advertisers. In fact, Senator McCaskill and I have made clear that backpage should redact from any documents they send us any of the personally identifying information about its users. We don't need that. That is not what we are about. What we are interested in are facts that will enable smart legislation on a critical issue of public concern. We hope our investigation will help to combat this process directly but also will help to generate legislation here in the Congress. This civil contempt resolution before us today--S. Res. 377--will enable us to get those facts. It was reported out of the full committee unanimously. I wish to thank Senator Ron Johnson, the chairman of the committee, and Senator Tom Carper, the ranking member of the committee, and all of our colleagues on the committee for their unwavering support for this investigation. This will be the first time in more than 20 years that the Senate has had to enforce a subpoena in court. I can't think of a time when it has been more justified. To my colleagues who are wondering about this, again, I hope they will look at our report and see why it is so important that we move forward with enforcing this subpoena. The Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations has a long history of investigating crime that infiltrates interstate commerce and affects our Nation's health and safety. In our era, the crime of human trafficking has become a scourge, and Congress needs to know everything it can to be able to better fight it. No investigation of that subject could omit backpage.com. Again, as we have heard from these outside groups, the vast majority of this sex trafficking that is going on online is through this very site. The National Association of Attorneys General has described backpage as a ``hub'' of ``human trafficking, especially the trafficking of minors.'' That is the attorneys general around the country. Unfortunately, this is an issue that affects all of our communities. It knows no ZIP Code. Madam President, before I yield the floor, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a number of statements in support of the resolution from the Nation's leading anti-trafficking organizations, including the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I want to thank my colleague from Oregon, and I am sure he will be back on the floor again to talk about this issue. Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Bill Mr. President, I want to address a couple of other issues quickly. One is the last act that this Senate took last week, which was passage of the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act. I didn't have a chance to speak on it because the Senate adjourned at that point, but I just want to congratulate my colleagues for coming together as Republicans and Democrats. It was a vote of 94 to 1. That never happens around this place. It is because people understand the significance of the challenge of heroin and prescription drug abuse and addiction back in our States and wanted to stand up and put forward Federal legislation that would help make the Federal Government a better partner with State and local governments and nonprofits that are out there in the trenches doing their best, with law enforcement who are trying their darnedest, and others in the emergency medical response community who are trying to deal with this issue. While traveling the State of Ohio the last 3 days, this Senator heard about it constantly. Before I would give a speech, people would come up and say thank you for dealing with this issue because my daughter, my cousin, or my friend is affected. Today, I was with a group of young people talking about other issues, and one said that his cousin at 23 years old had just succumbed to an overdose--died from an overdose of heroin. This a problem in all of our States. It is a problem where we can help make a difference. I want to congratulate my colleagues, Senator Whitehouse and others, for working with me to put this bill forward. We worked on it over 3 years in a comprehensive way, using the best expertise from around the country. Now I am urging my colleagues in the House of Representatives to follow suit. Let's pass this legislation. Let's send it to the President's desk for his signature. Let's get this bill working to be able to help our constituents all over this country to better deal with a very real epidemic in our communities. Now the No. 1 cause of death in my State is overdoses--from these deaths that are occurring from overdoses of heroin and prescription drugs. Again, I congratulate the Senate for acting on that on a bipartisan basis and having thoughtful legislation that is going to make a difference. Read Aloud Month Mr. President, I also rise today to speak about something that also affects our young people, which is literacy and learning. This happens to be Read Aloud Month. This U.S. Senate has established the month of March as being the month that we hold up those who read aloud to their kids, because we found it is incredibly important for a child's development--particularly for the ability of a child to become adept at other subjects at school by just being read to and the literacy that results from that. There is a campaign called the Read Aloud campaign. I congratulate them for the good work they do around the country. They started in my hometown of Cincinnati, OH, so I am very proud of them, but now it is a national effort. In libraries and schools across the country, March is held up as Read Aloud Month, where we encourage parents and other family members to get into the habit of reading to their children, if only for 15 minutes a day. That is all the Read Aloud campaign is asking for. If parents and other caregivers read at least 15 minutes a day to their kids, what an incredible difference it would make. There is one study that is now quite well known that shows, on average, by the time a child born into poverty reaches age 3, he or she will have heard 30 million fewer words than his or her peers who are not in poverty. What does that mean, 30 million fewer words? It means that those children born into poverty are at a severe disadvantage. It means they can have a lifetime of consequences that are negative for them. The more we learn about the way the brain develops, the more clear it is that verbal skills--like other skills--develop as they are used and atrophy as they are neglected. The younger the children are, the more important this is. So reading to children, particularly younger children, is incredibly important to their development. Even though this information is now out there and the Read Aloud campaign is doing a great job of getting the education out there, even with all this information we are told that in 40 percent of families in America today parents and other caregivers are not reading to their kids. There is a doctor at Cincinnati Children's Hospital, Dr. Tzipi Horowitz-Kraus, who is a real expert on this topic. She stated: ``The more you read to your child, the more you help the neurons in the brain to grow and connect.'' So that is the physiological change that occurs. We also know a child's vocabulary is largely reflective of the vocabulary at home from their parents and caregivers. There is a 2003 study by Elizabeth Hart and Todd Risley studying the impact of this 30 million word gap we talked about between households in poverty and those of their peers. They found that by age 3 the effects were already apparent. Even at that young age, ``trends in the amount of talk, vocabulary growth, and style of interaction were well established and clearly suggested widening gaps to come.'' That is another study out there about what the impact of this is. There are a lot of adults who might not know how important reading aloud is and don't feel they have enough to do it, but, again, 15 minutes a day is all they are asking. It adds up quickly and can help close this word gap. As parents, it may be the most important single thing we can do to help our children to be able to learn. Illiteracy or even what is called functional illiteracy--not being illiterate but not being able to read with proficiency--makes it so much harder to do everything, to earn a living, obviously to get a job, and to participate fully in society. It hurts self-esteem. It hurts personal autonomy. Millions of our friends and neighbors are struggling with these consequences every single day. According to the Department of Education, there are about 32 million adults in the United States who can't read. Nearly one out of every five adults reads below a fifth grade level. Nearly the same percentage of high school graduates cannot read. So one out of every five high school graduates not being able to read is an embarrassment for us as a country, our school system, and certainly what is not going on in our families, which again can help to get these kids off to the right start. For these adults who are functionally illiterate or illiterate, they all started with this disadvantage we are talking about, not having this opportunity at home. Some parents may say: OK, Rob. How do we afford this, because children's books aren't inexpensive. How do you get the online resources you might want to be able to read to your kids, if not books? I have one simple answer for that, which is get a library card. Our libraries in Ohio and around the country are all into this effort. They have all rallied behind it, and they are all eager to be a part of this. My wife Jane and I made it a priority to read to our kids when they were growing up, and a lot of that came from books we took out of the Cincinnati and Hamilton County Libraries. It also had the consequence of introducing our kids to the libraries and helped them to become lifelong readers and learners. That is one way for those who are wondering how to begin. Get a library card, go to your library, and get started there. I am proud Ohio has led the way in this effort. This campaign began in Cincinnati and is now becoming a national movement. We do talk a lot in this body about education. On a bipartisan basis, we recently passed legislation that had to do with K-12 education reform. I think it was an important step, but one thing it did is it returned more power back to the States and back to our families, which I think is a good thing. The new law also authorized grant funding for State comprehensive literacy plans, including targeted grants for early childhood education programs--what we are talking about here, early childhood. It made sure those grants are prioritized for areas with disproportionate numbers of low-income families. We also authorized professional development opportunities for teachers, literacy coaches, literacy specialists, and English as a Second Language specialists. These grants will be helpful in empowering our teachers to do their part to help our young people to learn to read. Clearly, our wonderful teachers have a role to play. To my colleagues, while this is all fine, there is no substitute for the family. There is no substitute for what can happen in a family before the child even goes to school and then while the child is starting school to be able to give that child the advantage of being able to learn more easily. Although I supported that legislation--there are some good things in there--let's not forget the fundamental role all of us play as parents or aunts or uncles or grandparents or other caregivers. Washington may be the only place on Earth where 30 million words-- which is this word gap we talked about, which is less than the length of our Tax Code and regulations--doesn't sound like a lot, but it is a lot, and there is no government substitute to close that 30 million word gap. Ultimately, it is going to be closed by parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, other caregivers, and brothers and sisters with the help of librarians, teachers, and others. We need to call attention to this issue to let parents know that this 15 minutes a day can make a huge difference. Every little bit counts. Every time you read to the child, you are giving him or her an educational advantage, you are making it easier for them to learn, helping to instill in them a love of learning that will last a lifetime. Again, I thank the Read Aloud campaign. I am proud of their roots in my hometown and in Ohio. I thank them for all they are doing every day for our kids and for our future. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, today I wish to honor the life of Shane N. Yates. Shane was the executive director of the Ohio Society of Association Executives. Shane had a fierce commitment to his organization and his profession. Shane had a relentless drive to serve all those he represented and lead all whom he worked with. Shane was a graduate of Ashland University and earned his certificate in nonprofit executive leadership from Indiana University. Shane was also a chapter adviser for his fraternity, Phi Kappa Psi; a past board member for Meeting Professionals International Ohio Chapter; and a volunteer for the United Way of Central Ohio. A passionate and high-energy executive with more than 15 years of achievement in association leadership, Shane was named a 40 Under 40 honoree in 2014 by the Association Forum of Chicagoland and USAE. While serving as the director, Shane helped the Ohio Society of Association Executives achieve many milestones while never settling with the status quo. Shane N. Yates will forever leave a mark on the Ohio Society of Association Executives and all who knew him.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, earlier this afternoon we had a very strong vote here in the U.S. Senate to move forward on the legislation we are currently considering. It is called the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act. It is legislation that is intended to make the Federal Government a better partner with State and local governments, with our nonprofits who are in the trenches around the country, and with all of our States dealing with this now-epidemic level of heroin addiction, prescription drug addiction, and overdoses. Today, as we are here in the Senate, on average, we will lose over 100 people a day in the United States of America to deaths from overdoses. Frankly, that is just part of the problem, as horrible as that is. So many people are being saved by this miracle drug called naloxone or Narcan. Also, others who may not be overdosing are not working. Their families are broken apart. They are committing crimes to support their addiction. So many Americans are not achieving their God- given purpose because of this addiction issue that is gripping our country. Our legislation is meant to address it in a very direct way. The debate on the floor that we had over the past week has been very interesting to me. It is the first time in decades that this Congress has taken up this issue in this manner. We have had a very open debate on addiction policy. What does it mean? I think what you heard Members say on both sides of the aisle is that we have learned a lot about addiction over the years and that addiction now is viewed by most as a disease, an illness. Like other illnesses, it needs treatment. I think that is a very important change in terms of how we address this issue, and the policy before us today on this floor that I hope we will vote on in the next 12 hours or so represents a change in thinking about this, that indeed we want to do everything we can to prevent the addiction in the first place, to keep people out of the funnel of addiction, to have better efforts in education and prevention, and that is in this legislation. But also, once we have people who are addicted, we need to get them into treatment. And for people who are arrested for possession, who are users of drugs, it is better to get them into treatment and recovery than just getting them into jail or prison because we have found that hasn't worked. So the criminal justice system has a role to play here--legalization is not a good idea--but that ought to be, in part, diverting people into treatment that works better for them to be able to get at this problem. Otherwise, folks will continue to see these incredibly high levels of use, addiction, and all the negative consequences that stem from that. I thank my coauthor of this legislation, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse. He and I have worked together over the past few years on this legislation, bringing in experts from all over the country and getting expertise from our home States. In Ohio, we had a number of roundtable discussions that added a lot of important input to be able to come up with legislation that actually works, that is actually going to direct funding to evidence-based programs and prevention and treatment and recovery that work. We talked a lot to our law enforcement community. That is one reason the Fraternal Order of Police supports our legislation. So does the Sheriffs' Association, so do the prosecutors, and so do the attorneys general, because we have actually worked with them to say: How can you be more effective in dealing with this very real problem you have in your community? And if you talk to law enforcement, you talk to firefighters, you talk to emergency medical folks, they will tell you this issue is at the top of their list. They are frustrated by it. They are looking for a solution, and this legislation helps to come up with the solution. I also thank Senator Ayotte, Senator Klobuchar, and 42 bipartisan cosponsors for their support of this legislation. It is comprehensive, it is evidence-based, and it is going to make a difference. Not only has it had a lot of support here in the Senate--and I hope we will see that again in the final vote--but it also has support in the House of Representatives. There was a companion bill at one time that was identical to our legislation, also called CARA, the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act. Ours has changed a little bit through the process, but it is very similar to the House companion bill. There are over 80 cosponsors to that legislation. It is a bipartisan bill on the House side as well. So this is one of those issues where if we pass it here in the Senate, we have a very good chance of passing it in the House and getting it to the President for his signature so it can begin to make a difference in our communities. The reason we are here today talking about this is, again, because so many people are suffering. There are 23 million Americans, it is said-- 23 million Americans--who are in recovery from addiction. Think about that. We are doing this for them, to ensure that they can have successful recoveries, to help them to ensure that they can keep their lives together and not fall back into this struggle of addiction. With 23 million people recovering, think of the millions who are still struggling. Together, those who are recovering and those who are addicted have begun to stand up and let their voices be heard. That is one of the differences I have seen in this debate, is that the stigma that has been associated with addiction has begun to be removed. There was a rally here on the Capital Mall several months ago. It was called the Unite to Face Addiction rally. There were people there from all over the country. Thousands of people came to Washington, DC-- thousands. And the message from them was, one, pass CARA, this legislation--and I appreciate their help. We wouldn't be here today on the floor talking about this issue if they hadn't engaged with their elected representatives in the House and the Senate and our leadership to help us get this moving. Second, there message was, look, addiction is a disease and it has to be treated like other illnesses, and we have to have legislation that helps break the stigma associated with drug addiction so that we can address it and we can begin to get people out of the grip of addiction and get our communities and families out of the grip of addiction. This is a cause, and it is one that requires law enforcement and the criminal justice system, but it also requires love and faith and communities coming together. It is one that we can only carry out together--all of us, not as Republicans or Democrats or Independents but as Americans, as fathers and mothers, family members and friends and coworkers who care about those who are facing this great challenge of addiction. CARA now has the support of over 130 groups around the country. These are criminal justice groups. These are people who are in the trenches every day dealing with treatment and prevention. These are folks who are in public health. These are people who are in law enforcement and understand the importance of this. They have all come together to say: Let's pass this legislation so we can begin to implement this evidence- based program to respond to this epidemic. It does add prevention and education efforts. It does do a lot to get prescription drugs off the shelves and get the medication out of the hands of our youth. It does allow us to monitor drugs. It authorizes law enforcement task forces to combat heroin and methamphetamine in areas that are particularly hard hit. It expands the availability of the miracle drug we talked about earlier--it doesn't always work, but it has saved a lot of lives--called naloxone or Narcan. In the criminal justice system, it does identify and treat individuals suffering from substance abuse disorders and expands diversion and education efforts to give those individuals that second chance. We give special help in this legislation to our veterans. We establish more funds for these veterans treatment courts. I have been to them in Ohio. They are incredible. Yesterday, I talked about the story of one of the veterans who had been in and out of the prison system. Now he not only has his life back together, he has his family back together. He is back in school getting a degree. He is one example of many who got off track because of PTSD, because of an addiction, used self-medication to deal with his PTSD, was in the prison system and is now back out. We are supporting that effort. We do help women who are postpartum and suffer from addiction. We do help babies who are born addicted. We have this incredible situation where in Ohio we now have a 750-percent increase in the number of babies who are born with this syndrome--with addiction. They have to be taken through withdrawal. I have gone to these neonatal units with my wife, and we have seen these incredibly compassionate doctors and nurses. What I hear from them is, you have to do something. This legislation takes that important step to the Federal level. CARA supports recovery programs focused on youth and building communities of recovery. It creates a national task force on recovery to get the experts really engaged to help us to improve ways to address some of the collateral consequences caused by addiction. Economists will tell us that addiction now costs this country about $700 billion every year. Think about that. That is lost productivity. That is more expensive health care. If you go to the emergency room in your community to find out what is going on, you will see a lot of people coming in because of addiction. There is the cost of policing and incarceration. Law enforcement tells me that most of the crime being committed in our communities is now being committed because of this issue. So $700 billion every single year is a lot of money, no doubt, but addiction costs us something else too: It costs us in dreams that are never fulfilled, in families who are torn apart, in lives that are lost. We don't just measure our success in dollars and cents. We measure it in safer neighborhoods, less crime, in empty jail cells, and by the number of people who never have to struggle with drug abuse in the first place because of more effective prevention and education. We measure it in the moms and dads who beat addictions so they can come back to be with their kids and bring their families back together. We measure it in the families who are not torn apart but instead are healed. As we move forward to pass this legislation--the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act--our message is a really simple one. To those who struggle with addiction, to those who think they cannot overcome, to those who believe there is no one out there who cares about them or can help them: You are not alone. We are with you. There is hope. I have seen people beat this. I have known people who have beat this. You can beat this. And we can be a better partner here at the Federal Government to be able to help people overcome this struggle. We need to pass this bill and get it signed into law to begin to make a real difference for the families we represent. The House has companion legislation also called CARA. They have a big bipartisan group supporting it. After we pass this legislation here-- because I am confident we will based on the vote this afternoon--I hope the House will take it up, take up CARA, and get it passed. Let's get it to the President for his signature, and let's truly begin to deal with this epidemic--it is at crisis levels, it is urgent, and it can't wait--so that we, all of us, can begin to make a real difference for those we represent. Thank you, Mr. President. I yield the floor.

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

Mr. PORTMAN

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

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, today the Senate continues to work on legislation that addresses the heroin epidemic affecting our communities all over the country. Every State represented by a Senator in this Chamber is affected by it. I am pleased to see that yesterday we had a strong vote on an important step forward to consider more amendments, with the hope we will consider them today or tomorrow and then have a vote on this legislation before the end of the week and send it over to the House of Representatives, where there is similar legislation, a companion bill that has already been drafted and is also bipartisan. I thank Sheldon Whitehouse, who is on the floor now, my coauthor, and also Senators Amy Klobuchar, Kelly Ayotte, and the 42 other bipartisan coauthors of our legislation. This is bipartisan, but it is also comprehensive and evidence based. It is not just supported by a lot of Senators, but it is also supported by a lot of groups. That is very important. Over the past few years, Senator Whitehouse and I have worked with groups around the country and in our own States to come up with the right answers; in other words, evidence-based solutions to prevention and education to help people not make the mistake and get into the funnel of addiction but also, once those people are addicted, to help them more with better treatment, better recovery, and to ensure we are treating addiction like a disease, which it is. We are also helping law enforcement and helping to keep prescription drugs off the bathroom shelves and helping to monitor people's prescription drug use because a lot of this comes from the overprescribing of prescription drugs for pain medication. I am pleased to see we are making progress, and I want to talk about one specific issue that is included in the legislation but which we have yet to talk about, at least at length on the floor. Over the last few years, we have had five forums in Washington, DC, to talk about issues related to addiction. Some have been with regard to the science of addiction, some about our youth, some about prevention, and some about better treatment options, but we had one that was particularly interesting, I thought. It was about a very special issue; that is, how to treat substance abuse impacting our veterans and servicemembers and how to prevent our veterans and servicemembers from becoming subject to this addiction. In the legislation we are considering on the floor, we focus on this issue. This came out of the expert testimony we had and the work that has been done around the country on this issue. CARA allows veterans who were discharged for a substance abuse disorder to use drug courts as they recover. Too often our men and women come home from serving our country with untreated trauma and PTSD, which often manifests itself in an addiction. We know from the research that has been done that more than 20 percent of veterans with PTSD also suffer from an addiction or dependence on drugs like heroin or a dependence on alcohol. So post- traumatic stress disorder is related very much to this addiction issue. A few weeks ago, I was in Columbus, OH, and met with our veterans court there. We had a roundtable discussion with some of the veterans who had been through it. It was actually a very inspiring experience hearing from veterans, many of whom had been serving our military in combat roles and had come home, gotten into some trouble. They were in and out of the court system, and then they found these veterans courts. These courts actually helped divert these veterans from prison, into treatment, and then into a support network with other veterans. For veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, going to jail can be a major hurdle in their recovery. Yet for many who turn to drugs and alcohol in an attempt to self-medicate, that is exactly where they end up. Ryan is a combat veteran. He served in Iraq. He had a distinguished career. He got home and found himself in a situation where he had trouble readjusting to life back at home outside of the military. He got into some trouble and ended up in jail. That didn't work for him. His quote was this: You send me to jail and all you're doing is sending me back to the jungle. All those coping skills I've learned, they go out the window. I'm the type of person that you put me in there and all hell breaks loose. That is Ryan. Fortunately for Ryan, he was able to participate in a veterans treatment court and get on the path to recovery. I am very proud of him today. He is a student at a major university in Ohio and about to graduate. He has his life back together and his family back together. Again, it was an inspirational story because he has taken it upon himself to focus on his addiction and get the help he needed through this veterans court. There are 17 veterans treatment courts in the State of Ohio. The program Ryan went through is a 2-year program that offers mental health and substance abuse treatment to veterans as an alternative to incarceration. These veterans also have to make regular court appearances, so it is not as though they are not connected to the criminal justice system. They are. They know if they test positive for drugs, they will end up back in that system. They are subject to random drug testing. As Ryan and the other veterans I talked to told me that day in Columbus, OH, this combination of accountability and support-- accountability and support--was the right combination for them to get back on the right track. It made a difference for them in getting their lives back together, their families back together, and to once again be contributing to their country. CARA will expand veterans treatment courts and will also ensure veterans who are discharged for substance abuse issues are also eligible to go through these programs. This is a critical change that will help allow more veterans to get the help they need and again get at the root cause of their addiction. CARA--the legislation we are considering right now--has the support, as I said, of a lot of groups--130 national stakeholders in public health, law enforcement, criminal justice and drug policy fields, doctors, nurses, and others working in the trenches on prevention and treatment. It is designed to fight prescription drug opioid abuse and heroin use holistically, from expanding prevention to supporting recovery. In addition to the specific provisions I discussed that help our veterans, CARA also expands prevention and educational efforts to prevent prescription opioid abuse and the use of heroin. It increases drug disposal sites to keep medications out of the hands of young people. It helps with regard to drug monitoring to know when people are being prescribed drugs, even if they cross State lines, by having an interstate drug monitoring system. The legislation also authorizes law enforcement task forces in some of our toughest areas around the country to combat heroin and methamphetamine and expands the availability of the overdose reversal drug naloxone--really a miracle drug--so that our law enforcement agencies and other first responders--our firefighters--have the training for using this drug but also have access to it. In the criminal justice system, CARA will help to promptly identify and treat individuals suffering from substance abuse disorders and expand these diversion efforts and these education efforts to give these people a second chance. CARA also authorizes resources to expand treatment, including medication-assisted treatment, based on the evidence that it supports what has worked around the country. So we are trying to hold up some of the best treatment programs in the country where there has been success on a very tough issue, which is taking people through this process of getting back on their feet and recovered. CARA supports those recovery programs that are strictly focused on youth and building communities of recovery, including at our colleges and universities. It also creates a national task force on recovery to improve ways to address the collateral consequences imposed by addiction. So this is a comprehensive bill that will help to reverse this tide. Again, this is something that is affecting us all. The numbers are overwhelming. In the United States of America today, there will be about 20 people who will die from overdoses. In Ohio, this happens every week. About 25 people are now dying from overdoses, but that is just part of the problem. Many are not dying from the overdose. Naloxone is working in many cases, for instance. Others aren't overdosing. Yet their lives are ruined, their families are torn apart, and the communities are bearing the brunt of it. Many more crimes are being committed. I was with a prosecutor in Ohio last weekend, and he told me 80 percent of the crime in his county is related now to this issue of heroin and prescription drug abuse. We need to pass this bill and get it signed into law so it can help reverse this tide, help our State and local governments and our nonprofits that are doing a great job trying to address this issue, and help individuals who are suffering from this addiction, which is a disease, to get the treatment they need and the recovery efforts that are needed to truly make a difference. This is an epidemic. It has now reached that kind of level--this kind of crisis level. I am hopeful we will again have a series of amendments that can be included and voted on in the next 24 hours; that we can move forward with this legislation and get a strong vote. We can then send it over to the House with a strong message that it is time for us to do what we can to address this issue and make a difference in the lives of our constituents. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, that is good news. The Presiding Officer just announced the results of the vote, and that is good news because it means the Senate has just taken another step toward the passage of CARA, the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act. I see my colleague Senator Whitehouse is on the floor. I thank him and thank my colleagues on both sides of the aisle for moving forward on this legislation that will help us to save friends, family members, our neighbors, and communities that are struggling with addiction. This is a very important opportunity for us to be able to move forward on legislation that is comprehensive, that is bipartisan, and that has a companion bill on the House side, so there is a very good chance we could get this to the President's desk. It is the only bipartisan legislation that is comprehensive and evidence based, and it is critical we move forward with it. In addition to Senator Whitehouse, I also thank Senator Ayotte, Senator Klobuchar, and 42 bipartisan cosponsors for their support. Frankly, more important to me is the support around the country this legislation has. I think Senator Whitehouse and I now have over 130 groups around the country that are supporting this legislation. This includes doctors, nurses, health care professionals, also law enforcement, people who are in the trenches dealing every day with treatment and recovery, and those who are focused on prevention and how to ensure people cannot just be treated for addiction but try to keep people out of the funnel of addiction. We started working on this legislation about 3 years ago. We started by hearing from experts around the country. We had five conferences in Washington where we looked at all the issues, including criminal justice, women and addiction, the science of addiction, youth prevention, recovery issues, substance abuse impacting our veterans--a number of issues that enabled us to write legislation that actually makes sense, that will make a difference in our communities. These 130 groups around the country are focused on getting this bill passed because they know it is going to make a difference in our communities. If enacted, this will help States and communities develop and implement these evidence-based practices that we have looked at from around the country. It expands prevention and educational efforts to prevent prescription opioid abuse and the use of heroin and increases drug disposal sites to keep medications out of the hands of youth. It also authorizes law enforcement task forces to combat heroin and methamphetamine and expands the availability of the overdose reversal drugs such as naloxone, which are miracle drugs. It provides not just naloxone but also more training to our law enforcement officials, to firefighters, and to other emergency responders. In the criminal justice system, CARA will help promptly identify and treat individuals suffering from substance abuse and expand diversion and education efforts to give individuals a second chance. Frankly, it is going to help to get people into treatment rather than going into the criminal justice system. Locking up people hasn't worked. If people are being arrested for possession alone, for using, this legislation will help to divert those people into the treatment to get them back on their feet. CARA also authorizes resources to expand treatment in general, including medication-assisted treatment--again based on the research that has been done around the country. It allows veterans who were discharged for a substance abuse disorder to use drug courts as they recover. So it provides actual grants to these veterans treatment courts. They are doing a terrific job. I have toured these in Ohio and talked to some of these veterans who have been through these programs. Again, it helps get our veterans back on the right track. Rather than ending in jail, they end up in a treatment program with other veterans helping them and supporting them, where they can begin to deal with their addiction and mental health issues. CARA supports recovery programs, including those focused on youth and building communities of recovery. This happens now at our colleges and universities increasingly. We want to support that. It also creates a task force on recovery to improve ways to address the collateral consequences imposed by addiction. One of the most important aspects of this legislation expands drug treatment for pregnant women who struggle with addiction and provides support for babies born with neonatal abstinence syndrome, babies who are born with addiction. Recently, my wife Jane and I visited Rainbow Babies and Children's Hospital in Cleveland, OH. We toured the neonatal unit. If you haven't done this, it will break your heart because you will find there an increasing number of babies who are born, again, with this addiction, the neonatal abstinence syndrome. Unfortunately, when you look at what has happened in Ohio, we have had a 750-percent increase in the number of babies who are diagnosed with this neonatal abstinence syndrome just since 2004--a 750-percent increase. I am told in some of our States now 10 percent of the babies are being born addicted. I have also been at other hospitals around our State, including Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center and St. Rita's Special Care Nursery in Lima, OH. Last week my wife went to Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus. Every single one of these children's hospitals is experiencing the same thing. What I have learned from these incredibly compassionate nurses and doctors who take these newborns through a withdrawal process is that the numbers of babies who have been exposed to heroin or prescription drugs continue to grow. The problem is getting worse, not better. These hospitals serve as yet another reminder that addiction is a disease. It is a disease that has to be treated like other diseases, and it is a disease that can impact anyone. It is wonderful that these caring nurses, doctors, and others are working to try to ensure that these babies become healthy. We don't know what the long-term consequences are, but we need to do more to avoid the addiction in the first place and better treat it when it occurs, and that is what this legislation does. Specifically, the measure takes steps to help women and babies by expanding treatment for expectant and postpartum women and authorizing the Department of Health and Human Services to award grants to ensure that these women have access to evidence-based treatment services. That is in this legislation. It also reauthorizes residential treatment programs for pregnant and postpartum women struggling with addiction. There is a great center in Columbus, OH, called Amethyst. I had the opportunity to visit it. It is a treatment center, and the average length of stay there is almost 2 years. Their results are unbelievable. They allow women to come with their babies, with their children, to go through treatment together. So there is hope. There are treatment centers doing a great job. We want to hold those up and encourage more of that around the country. Finally, the legislation also creates a pilot program for State substance abuse agencies that allows funds to be used to target women who are addicted to opioids and provide family-based services to those women in nonresidential settings. So it helps on the residential side but also with the nonresidential outpatient side. Helping these women and helping these babies is just one aspect of this bill, but it is a very critical one. As we work to turn the tide in the struggle against addiction, it is one on which we should all be focused. The good news is that the bipartisan momentum we have seen here tonight is building. I think the Senate is ready to move on this legislation this week. There are other amendments that have been filed. The deadline was today. I hope we will have the opportunity to go through some more amendments, as we did last week, but meanwhile, we have strong support and strong momentum, as we saw tonight, on both sides of the aisle. Both Republican and Democratic leaders have lined up to support this legislation. We need to pass this bill and get it signed into law so it can begin to make a real difference in the lives of people we represent. As the heroin epidemic in Ohio and around the country has reached crisis level, I look forward to working with my colleagues to get this bill over the finish line here in the Senate and then get it passed in the House, where there is companion legislation, and then on to the President's desk and enable this Congress to play a role as a better partner with State and local governments and with our nonprofits around this country to address this growing heroin epidemic around our entire country. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Madam President, I am pleased to see that on the floor we continue to make progress on the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act. The legislation before us today, yesterday, and this week has been about how to deal with this growing problem we have around the country. It is at epidemic levels of heroin and prescription drug abuse, addiction, and overdoses. Today, while we are talking about this legislation on the floor of the Senate, we expect over 100 Americans will die--die from overdoses of addiction, overdoses of heroin or prescription drugs. This is a problem that doesn't just affect my State of Ohio, although we are one of those States that is most severely impacted. It affects every single State represented by everyone in this Chamber. That is why, over the past few years, you have seen this body together, Republicans and Democrats alike, to address the problem. Senator Whitehouse and I have been the coauthors of this effort, but so many others have been involved. Senator Ayotte, Senator Klobuchar, Senator Feinstein--who is on the floor right now--have been supportive of the legislation but also improved the legislation with an amendment which was accepted earlier this week dealing with the international drug cartels. There is an effort in this body to take on this issue, not in a partisan way but in a totally nonpartisan way. Last week I was in Ohio meeting with groups, talking about various issues. Every single place I went this issue came up. I was on a plant tour, and people talked to me about it. We had a townhall meeting at that factory. At the end of the townhall meeting--after talking about taxes, energy, health care policy, and other issues--I asked for a simple show of hands of how many people have been affected where their families or friends have been affected by this new opiate addiction issue, heroin and prescription drugs. Half the hands in the room went up. They went up because this is something that is tearing at our families and our communities. It is devastating so many of our communities. The cost to the taxpayers is also tremendous. I went to a hospital and what they wanted to talk about was how the emergency rooms are being filled with people who are overdosing or abusing drugs. I have been to three different hospitals in our State that are doing amazing things to care for those babies who are being born with addictions. There has been a huge increase in my State of babies who were born with an addiction to opiates because of their mothers being addicted during the pregnancy. They have to take these babies--some of whom are so small they can fit into the palm of your hand--through the withdrawal process. We don't know what the long-term consequences are for many of these babies because this is such a new issue, but we know this is something that is tearing at our communities. It is time to address this issue. There has been a recognition of that, and I am very encouraged by the progress we have made this week on this legislation. I hope we can find a way to get to the final amendments and get the legislation passed because it is urgent we deal with this. The House of Representatives has their own legislation. It is also called CARA--Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act. It is bipartisan also. We believe if we can pass this bill with a strong vote--and we had an 89-to-0 vote to get on the bill itself to move to the legislation, which was very encouraging--Senator Whitehouse and I believe we will get a strong vote in the House as well, and we can get it to the President's desk for his signature and begin to reverse this trend. The legislation is something that went through a unique process around here, which is bipartisan or even nonpartisan from the start and a process of bringing in experts from all around the country. Rather than us saying we know all the answers, we are going to write this legislation, we said let's hear from others. Senator Whitehouse and I, Senator Ayotte, Senator Klobuchar and others held a series of summits here in Washington. We brought in people. Many of us have done this in our States as well, but here in Washington alone we had five of these conferences in 2014 and 2015. We brought experts in from around the country, but we also relied on expertise from the administration. In April of 2014, we held a forum on criminal justice and how it is affected by this issue and treatment and alternatives to incarceration. One of the things this legislation does is it encourages diversion out of the criminal justice system for those who are addicts and gets them into treatment. It was an excellent forum. It featured Michael Botticelli. In my view, he has been a very effective Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy. He is called the drug czar. This is within the White House. Michael Botticelli came as a representative of the White House but so did a representative from the Drug Enforcement Agency and gave his great input. In July of 2014, we held another forum. This was on how women are impacted by this drug epidemic, looking at addiction and treatment responses. We talked about pregnant women being addicted and their babies. Again, this forum featured Michael Botticelli, who is Director of the White House Office of Drug Control Policy. In December 2014, at the end of the year, we held another forum. This was on the science of addiction and how we can potentially address the collateral consequences of addiction. This forum featured Dr. Nora Volkow, Director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse in the Obama administration. It also included the Department of Justice and Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration officials. SAMHSA was there. DOJ was there. By the way, again, Director Botticelli was there as well. I appreciate him coming to that forum, which was very helpful to us. Last year, in April of 2015, we held a forum on our youth and how we can better promote drug prevention as well as to develop communities of recovery for those who are suffering from addiction. Prevention and education is a big part of our legislation. Clearly, we need to do a better job to get people to make the right decisions to avoid getting into the funnel of addiction in the first place. This forum featured officials from the Office of National Drug Control Policy in the Obama administration. It also had officials from the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Lastly, in July of 2015, we held a forum on the impact of substance abuse and PTSD on our veterans. It focused a lot on the issue of addiction and the high rates we see sometimes of mental health and addiction coming from some of our returning veterans. This forum featured one of the giants in this field, GEN Barry McCaffrey. General McCaffrey and I have worked together since his days as Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy in the Clinton administration. He is not just a giant in this field, but he gave us great input as to how to write good legislation to help us with regard to veterans courts, which we have as part of this legislation where veterans can get the help they need to get their lives back on track. That forum also featured officials from the Department of Defense, Department of Veterans Affairs, and the Office of National Drug Control Policy. From all these participants in this process, we received a lot of great feedback. It helped guide us as we wrote this legislation. In fact, we went back and forth with legislative language with all these experts in the Obama administration, as well as experts from around the country. This legislation is supported by over 130 groups--including those representing people who were in the trenches--providing treatment, providing services on prevention, law enforcement, and doctors. Those who are involved directly in this issue have given us a lot of guidance, but that included the expertise of these experts in the Obama administration. I am appreciative for that expertise and for their support of our efforts. Because it was such an inclusive process, because it was a bipartisan process, because of the encouragement and the assistance we received from the drug experts in the Obama administration, when we introduced this bill, we actually said: OK. Here is our final product. After the back-and-forth on all the legislative language and with all the experts, this bill received a lot of support immediately on a bipartisan basis. As I said earlier, indeed, 130 national anti-drug groups now support it in part because they helped write it, in part because some of those who might not have been intimately involved in the process are looking at this problem and realizing this is a solution that will really help. We also have dozens of groups from my home State of Ohio that support it, in addition to the 130 national groups, from the Fraternal Order of Police to the National Attorneys General Association, to the folks who are involved day-to-day in helping to deal with this issue at their local level. I believe it was the day before yesterday that we received a Statement of Administration Policy from the political officials at the White House on the CARA bill, and I have talked about how the administration and their experts have been so helpful, but despite all the work they have done to support this bill, the White House did not issue a Statement of Administration Policy that supported the legislation. It didn't oppose the legislation, but instead it said that the drug epidemic would not be greatly affected by this legislation unless there was substantial new funding provided. This is kind of incredible given that this is the legislation we all worked on together. I know there is a difference between the political folks at the White House and the people who actually know the issue and are experts on the issue, but I hope we can get a strong statement of administration support for a bill that was drafted with them on a bipartisan basis with myself, Senator Whitehouse, Senator Klobuchar, and others, but we will see. I support additional funding over and above the $80 million of new funding that CARA provides for, and not just for this year but for next year and the year after that and the year after that. It is an authorization bill that is extremely important. I supported the Shaheen amendment yesterday, but it is factually wrong to say, as some of my colleagues have claimed and the White House seems to be saying, that there is not funding for these CARA programs. In fact, we have already appropriated, as my colleagues know, significantly more spending for this opioid problem for this fiscal year that we are in. Not a penny of that has been spent yet, by the way--over $120 million of additional spending. That $120 million of additional spending is targeted on ways to spend the money more wisely through CARA because we worked with the appropriators and the Judiciary Committee to ensure that was the case. Again, having said that, I would have loved to have seen more funding over and beyond that provided by an amendment that was offered by my colleague Senator Shaheen yesterday because I think that would have helped even more, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't strongly support the underlying CARA bill. In fact, my colleagues who endorsed it and voted with us, as well as my coauthor Senator Whitehouse and others, agree with that because this bipartisan bill ensures that more Federal resources will be devoted to evidence-based education, treatment, and recovery programs that we know actually work. It is not just throwing money at the problem. This is actually legislation that we know works to address the problem based on all the background I just mentioned about getting all the expertise. Again, these groups out there that are in the trenches every day working on this issue are the ones who will tell you why it is going to work, but what they will say is it is going to help these young mothers battling addiction. It will help those veterans who return home from duty and desperately need our help. It will help young people make the right decision. It will help that teenager struggling with drug abuse. It will help in terms of dealing with this problem we have right now where people can't get treatment because there is not enough access to treatment. It will help in terms of ensuring that we get prescription drugs off the bathroom shelves so they are not being used to get people addicted to opioids and then move on to heroin. It will be helpful to ensure that we have a drug monitoring program nationally so we know who is being overprescribed and who is not. These are changes in law that are part of this legislation. Again, I thank the experts in the Obama administration who deal with this issue every day and strongly support CARA. On January 27, 2016--so at the end of January this year--the Judiciary Committee held a hearing on our bill. I was able to testify, as well as others, including experts. Here is what some of the leading administration experts said. First, Michael Botticelli--again, a guy who I think has been a very effective Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy at the White House--said: There is clear evidence that a comprehensive response looking at multidimensional aspects of this that are embedded in the CARA Act are tremendously important. We know we need to do more, and I think that all of those components put forward in the bill are critically important to make headway in terms of this epidemic. Again, that was the Director of ONDCP. Dr. Nora Volkow, the Director of the administration's National Institute on Drug Abuse, and a real expert, said: We support the comprehensive program delineated, and it is one of the strategies to address the problem. Here is Ms. Kana Enomoto. She is the Acting Administrator of SAMSHA, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. She said: At SAMSHA we are so excited to be able to implement programs like medication-assisted treatment, prescription drug and opioid addiction, which Congress appropriated in 2015 and then another increase in 2016, which is very similar to some of the programs that were described in the CARA Act. Thank you, Senator Whitehouse, for your leadership on this issue and continued support of our mission. We believe that the public health approach of the CARA Act is vitally important to moving forward on this issue. The next statement I have is by Mr. Milione. He is the Deputy Assistant Administrator for the Drug Enforcement Administration Office of Diversion Control. He said: I am happy to work with you or anyone on any legislation that will help with this epidemic. Again, I am thankful for these experts in the Obama administration who have put politics aside to work to support CARA. They helped us to come up with better legislation, and they support it because they know it will help support education and prevention so we can stop drug abuse before it begins. They support CARA because they know it will help with treatment and recovery and will help to reduce overdoses which will help to save lives. They support CARA because they know it will help our veterans as well as women and babies who are suffering from addiction. They also support CARA because they know there are more than 130 national groups out there that understand the importance of this bill and support it, including the National Association of Addiction Treatment Providers, Faces and Voices of Recovery, Children's Health, Children's Hospital Association, the Partnership for Drug-Free Kids, Fraternal Order of Police--again, I thank our law enforcement for stepping up on this--the National District Attorneys Association, and the Major Counties Sheriff's Association. I understand that some folks in Washington like to play politics with everything around here, but politics has never been a part of this bill. It has been inclusive from the start and it has been bipartisan from the start. We are here to help those suffering from addiction and to save lives, and that is exactly what this measure will do. Let's get on with it and pass this legislation so we can get it to the President's desk for signature and it can begin to help. I yield back.

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

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Nevada for yielding to me to speak for a moment in response to the comments made by my colleagues about the legislation before us, which is legislation to address the horrible problem we have in all our States of the addictions caused by heroin and prescription drugs. About 100 people will die today from overdoses, and that is just the tip of the iceberg because there are so many other people whose lives are being ruined, families being torn apart, and communities being devastated. Senator Whitehouse, other Members of this body, and I drafted this legislation over the period of the last few years, including five summits we had in this Congress to bring in experts from all over the country on prevention, education, treatment, and recovery--dealing with the law enforcement side and the importance of having Narcan available and also helping to get prescription drugs off bathroom shelves and ensure we had drug-monitoring programs. It is a comprehensive approach. I will say I disagree a little with my coauthor, my colleague from Rhode Island, in saying that if we could pass this bill, there would be no funding for it somehow. There was a huge increase in funding, as everyone knows, at the end of the year for opioids. Senator Whitehouse, others, and I approached the appropriators and asked them to be sure that funding was consistent with where we were on CARA at that time--in the middle of the Judiciary Committee. When we had some jurisdictional issues, we worked hard to draft the legislation so that if we could get it enacted this fiscal year--that is between now and September 30-- there would be funding to help us accomplish what is in the legislation. However, as my colleagues know, this bill is an authorization bill. What does that mean? It means it is a bill that directs how funding will be spent. It is not a spending bill. Having said all that, as Senator Shaheen knows, I supported her efforts to add additional resources over and above what could be spent this year on CARA because I believe this is such an urgent problem, and I believe it does rise to the level of being an emergency. That is saying a lot. I am a fiscal conservative. But that means it is not paid for by offsetting other programs. It is just additional funding because it is such an urgent need. We have done this on other occasions with health care emergencies when we have had something like the Ebola crisis. Well, I think this is a crisis too, so I voted with Senator Shaheen today. I am a cosponsor of her amendment. I support it, but I don't support the efforts of some who say somehow there is no money in here. This is an authorization bill. This is the first step toward getting the money, not just this year but into the future. That is the point. Back in the House, I was the author of the Drug-Free Communities Act. Some 19 years later, $1.3 billion has been spent in support of the Drug-Free Communities Act, helping to create over 2,000 community coalitions, including in just about every State represented in this body. Was that a spending bill? No. It was like this--an authorization bill to direct the spending based on a lot of research and effort, evidence-based practices we know would work. That is what this is. This is taking it to the next level. Specifically directed to the points my good friend from Maine just mentioned about treatment centers being filled and detox centers not having room for someone to go to get the detox and then get into treatment, these are real problems in our communities now. That is what this legislation is meant to address, not just by appropriations for 1 year but by changing the law for the future. If we do this, and do it right, in another 19 years in this legislation, we will spend even more than we spent on the Drug-Free Communities Act. It will be well over $2 billion that will have been spent that would otherwise not have gone out because of this legislation. So just as Senator Whitehouse said that he strongly supports this bill because it is evidence based, because we spent the right time putting the effort into making sure it would be money well spent, this bill is really important. I appreciate the support of my colleagues--Senators Shaheen, King, and Whitehouse. Senator Whitehouse and I have been at this for a few years together. It is the right thing to do for our country at a time when we do face a crisis. Again, I will support the additional spending because I think this is so critical. But let's not go forward with this sense that somehow this doesn't matter. This does matter in a very big way. This is a necessary first step. And in terms of this year, because we increased funding dramatically at the end of the year for this fiscal year--not one penny of that has been outlaid, by the way; it has been appropriated but there has been no outlay yet--I believe anything we could get done this year--getting it through the House, getting it through the Senate, and the President signing it--would be funding we could use for these important CARA programs just in the 7 months of this fiscal year. Certainly we should right now--as I have done and I know Senator Whitehouse is doing and others are doing--go to the Committee on Appropriations and say: With regard to next fiscal year, let's be sure that we have the entire bill funded. And again, I would support even additional funding beyond that. But at a minimum, let's get this done. This is an opportunity on a bipartisan basis to actually get something done to help people who are crying out for our help. Communities need our help. Families that are being broken apart need our help. I appreciate the fact Senator Shaheen made her best effort today. She was right, in my view, but let's also continue to work together to get this legislation passed with whatever funding we can add to it. That is great with me, but let's get this bill passed to ensure that going into the future we are directing this funding effectively and increasing this funding to help those who need it most. Again, I appreciate my colleague from Nevada, and I am sorry to take so much of his time. I yield the floor.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I ask if my colleague would defer to me for just 2 minutes so I may address the CARA bill that Senator Whitehouse has been talking about, and then I will yield to the Senator from Virginia. First, I wish to thank Senator Whitehouse for his partnership. As he said, we have been working on this issue for the last few years to ensure that we have a comprehensive approach to this horrible issue of drug addiction and specifically the increasing threat of addiction to prescription drugs and heroin which we see in all of our communities. It is the No. 1 cause of death in my home State of Ohio, and we have been told it is the No. 1 cause of accidental death in the country. It is far worse than that. It is tearing apart families and communities, and we need to address it. I will say two things. One, this is not just a bill about principles, this is a bill about policy, and Senator Whitehouse and I are supporting new policies to approach this issue more effectively, as to prevention and education, as to treatment and recovery, as to dealing with the unfortunate situation of too many overdoses of naloxone, as to training, as to getting prescription drug monitoring programs in place, as to helping these addicted babies and mothers who are pregnant and have an addiction. There are very specific policy changes here that direct the increase in appropriations which is provided for in the current fiscal year, for the next 7, 8 months. That funding will be there for this legislation. If we were to pass this bill tomorrow and get it enacted into law, that funding would be there not just in principle but in specific ways to spend that money more effectively. I wanted to make that point clear. Second, I do support additional resources, as does Senator Whitehouse. I believe this is such a crisis that it requires resources over and above what we even provided in CARA. We have to get CARA done, and I agree with Senator Whitehouse on that. This is priority No. 1 not just for us but for the 130 groups around the country that are the experts in prevention, education, treatment, and recovery. They have come together and given us their best counsel; that is, that this legislation will actually help to begin to reverse this terrible trend of addiction. I am hopeful we can have a full debate on this legislation. I understand Senator Shaheen is going to offer an amendment. I have seen the revised version of her amendment, and I believe I will be able to support her amendment. I have just started to look it over, but I like it because it does provide additional funding. The funding is in addition to the funding we know will already be in there for CARA. It would be emergency funding. It is not usual for me to support funding that is not paid for through other offsets, but I believe we are in such a crisis in this country, including my State, that I will be able to support that. However, as Senator Whitehouse said, we have to pass the underlying bill. I appreciate my colleague's commitment on that, and I appreciate the commitment of so many other great groups around the country that have supported us and said: Let's not get off track here. Let's get this legislation passed. We have companion legislation in the House. It is bipartisan and identical to the legislation Senator Whitehouse and I introduced. We worked together with the House on this legislation. This is bipartisan. They have over 88 cosponsors, Republicans and Democrats. We have very good signals from the White House that shows they are interested in working with us. Therefore, this can actually get done. It is not just about funding for this year. Obviously, this would be a change in the way we spend money. It is an authorization to change it next year and the year after that and the year after that. In my experience that is what needs to be done. I was the author of the Drug-Free Communities Act in the House for almost the past two decades. There has now been $1.3 billion under the auspices of the Drug-Free Communities Act that directs and targets that funding to what we know is effective prevention. Our legislation takes that to the next step with regard to heroin and prescription drugs and will help those communities that are particularly impacted. I thank my colleague from Rhode Island. I also thank my colleague from Virginia for his indulgence. I am sorry to interrupt his colloquy with our colleagues. I yield my time.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, first I thank my colleague and chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Chuck Grassley. Many years ago I went to Iowa with Senator Grassley to set up an anti-drug coalition. We had done one in Ohio. I was the chair of that, and Chuck Grassley asked if I would come. This was probably 20 years ago that Senator Grassley--and I was in the House. We had a great visit. We had a couple of townhall meetings. Chuck Grassley is a guy who understands the issue, cares about it, and has devoted a lot of time and resources to it in Iowa. The people of Iowa know he is sincere about it because he has been on the ground setting up these coalitions and dealing with this issue. Frankly, it is a little disappointing--probably to him and to me--to see that some 20 years later we are still facing this issue now and even different issues. He mentioned methamphetamines. He mentioned, of course, the heroin and opiate addiction problems with prescription drugs. Twenty years ago it was more marijuana and cocaine, but I think the lesson we have all learned is these drugs will come and go in terms of their severity and their impact on our communities and our families, but it is always going to be there, and we need to keep up the fight. Right now we have an urgent problem. That urgent problem was outlined by Senator Grassley, but it is this growing use of opiates that leads to a horrible addiction. It has a grip on so many of our constituents, so many of our loved ones. Over the weekend I had a townhall meeting. I asked--after we had talked about taxes, trade, energy, and other issues--if people would just raise their hands if they had been affected by the heroin and prescription drug addiction problem. I said: Has anybody in your family and friends been affected? Half of the hands in the room went up. Unfortunately, that is the reality of this situation. In Ohio last year we lost almost 2,400 just to overdose deaths. That doesn't account for the fact that so many people are being saved now by naloxone--which is something that is encouraged by our legislation and we will talk about it in a second. Narcan is being used, but even those who survive the overdoses, of course, are seeing their families broken apart, their communities devastated. I talked to a prosecutor over the weekend in one of our more rural counties, and he said: Rob, over 80 percent of our crime is directly related to this issue now, heroin and prescription drugs. Often it is people committing crimes to pay for their habit. The people who are the purveyors of these drugs have a business plan; that is, to get you hooked with a relatively low cost at first and then you need more and more to be able to feel the same high. It gets more expensive to the point that it might go from $50 to $100 the first time to $1,000 or $1,500 a day by the end of your addiction. This is how horrible it is and it leads to so many collateral consequences. I am very pleased the Senate voted tonight to proceed to this legislation called CARA, the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act. CARA is a Federal response to this issue. It is attempting to make the Federal Government a better partner with State and local governments, with nonprofits, to be able to help to reverse this tide to deal with this urgent problem in our communities. I would call it an epidemic. It certainly is at epidemic levels in my State of Ohio. Sadly, we are the top five in the country in terms of overdose deaths, but again it goes well beyond just those deaths. There are so many people who are affected by it negatively and so many who have not been able to fulfill their God-given purpose because of this horrible addiction. This legislation called CARA is bipartisan. It is comprehensive. As Senator Grassley said, he got it through the Judiciary Committee. I appreciate that. He got it through with something very extraordinary around here, which is a unanimous vote--meaning nobody objected. That never happens around here. It just means that every Senator is addressing this issue back home, understands it, and wants to do something about it. This legislation is built on common sense, research, and experts from around the country who have come in. I thank Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, who is the lead Democrat on this legislation and my lead cosponsor. He and I are the coauthors of this legislation. I also thank Senators Kelly Ayotte and Amy Klobuchar, who have been terrific partners. Then there are 34 other bipartisan cosponsors. I thank them all for their support. I am excited that if this bill can pass, it will pass in the House as well because there is companion legislation. In fact, the House bill has 88 cosponsors right now--also bipartisan. So the idea is to get this bill passed, get it through the House, and have it signed into law by the President of the United States. It is urgent we do it. This is a bill that not only has a lot of support on both sides of the aisle, but--much more importantly to me--it has the support of people all over the country who are experts in this field: doctors; those in recovery; experts in prevention, treatment, and recovery; and law enforcement. The legislation actually comes--I hope you can see on this chart, the words are kind of small--but it comes from the last few years, putting together these experts from all around the country. We had five different summit meetings in Washington, DC. One was with the criminal justice system. We brought in experts from all around the country to talk about treatment and alternatives to incarceration. As you will see in this legislation, we have ways to divert people from incarceration into treatment programs, which we think is part of the way to solve this problem. We then had one that focused on women, the special interests and needs of women who are facing addiction and how to ensure they get into treatment. As we will talk about later, this has a lot to do with one of the problems that is out there right now, which is more and more babies who are born with addiction and having to take those babies through withdrawal. The care and compassion involved in that is truly impressive, but that was a good forum for us. We had one on the science of addiction and addressing the consequences of addiction. There are a lot of good people around the country who understand the science of this and what medication might work and what future medication might be better to deal with it. We talked about youth drug prevention and developing communities of recovery. This is a very important aspect of our legislation. We don't just talk about treatment, as important as that is, we talked about how you divert people from getting into it in the first place through better prevention and education. Finally, we had a forum on veterans focusing on substance abuse and PTSD and other issues. I recently visited one of our veterans courts in Columbus, OH, and saw the good work they are doing. Most people going through that court have mental health issues. Most also now have, sadly, opioid addiction issues, usually starting with prescription drugs and moving to heroin. As I said, there is strong bipartisan support for this legislation in the House and the Senate. It is endorsed by more than 130 groups nationwide. By the way, those groups include some groups you might not expect normally to be together on something such as this--the Fraternal Order of Police, the American Society of Addiction Medicine, the Faces and Voices of Recovery, the Coalition for a Drug Free America, the Children's Hospital Association, the National Association of Addiction Treatment Providers, the Partnership for Drug Free Kids, the American Society of Addiction Medicine, the National Association of State Alcohol and Drug Abuse Directors, groups who are in all of our States, the National Council for Behavioral Health, and, of course, the Major County Sheriffs' Association. So law enforcement, treatment, recovery, education--everybody is coming together on this because we realize this is going to take that kind of comprehensive approach with all sectors of our community being involved and engaged. CARA now has support not only of a lot of these groups from around the country, but because of these groups--they helped us write a better bill. What does the bill do? Here are the basic elements of CARA: First, with regard to prevention and education, it does establish new task forces to develop better practices for prescribers simply because there has been overprescribing, particularly of prescription drugs. These narcotics have been overprescribed to the point that many people end up on heroin as a less expensive alternative to the prescription drugs to which they have become addicted. The task force is an interagency task force that is reporting back to the Congress on how to develop these best practices for the medical community. The bill also establishes a national awareness campaign with regard to prevention and education. That is critical for us to get the word out. It has grants to local coalitions. This is in the Drug-Free Communities Act area. The Drug-Free Communities Act goes back to the 1990s. Since 1998 there has been $1.3 billion spent under the Drug-Free Communities Act. I was the author of that in the House. It is good legislation that helped create over 2,000 community coalitions around America. I chaired ours in Cincinnati, OH, for 9 years and am still very involved with it, and they do great work. But, again, we now have this new issue, this new threat we must address. This helps with regard to specific grants where there is a high degree of opioid addiction and the negative consequences of it, to be able to blend with the drug-free community program. Law enforcement. The bill provides for training for Narcan--what is known as naloxone--for first responders to prevent overdoses. I think everybody in this Chamber has run into this back home. I went to a firehouse recently because we had lost a brave firefighter in a house fire, and I went to talk to his shift about him and to thank them for their service. After talking to them about their fallen comrade, they wanted to talk about this issue. They told me: Rob, we are spending more time administering Narcan than we are fighting fires these days. In other words, they are going out and helping people who are having overdoses and are saving their lives. A friend of mine who is a firefighter in Cincinnati told me just a couple of weeks ago that he was responding to an overdose, saving someone in front of a house, when, in an entirely different group in the back of the house, an overdose occurred. In Toledo last week, there was a response by emergency medical services to somebody who had hit a telephone pole. They found him with a syringe in his arm. He had overdosed. While they were responding to him, there were two other overdose calls in Toledo--one city in Ohio. There were three at the same time. Two of the three were saved by Narcan. The third died. Our folks in law enforcement and our first responders, our firefighters, are doing a terrific job. They need help. They need more Narcan and more training to be sure they can continue to do what they are doing to prevent these overdoses. It is not the answer. Of course, the answer is prevention, education, and better treatment. But in the meantime, we have to provide them the help they need. The law enforcement side also expands these drug prescription take- back programs. They work very well, as Senator Grassley said, in some of our States. We need to do more to expand those, and that is usually done through our law enforcement communities. It also authorizes a task force to combat heroin and methamphetamines. These are the law enforcement task forces we talked about earlier, which will help to coordinate Federal, State, and local law enforcement to deal with this issue. On the treatment and recovery side, it expands medication assisted treatment for opioid and heroin addiction. It creates diversion, education, and treatment programs in the criminal justice system. We talked about that earlier. That is so important. I have been at roundtable discussions all around my State and at a number of treatment centers talking to recovering addicts about how they got into the situation they are in and what advice they have. A young man told me a classic story. He had an injury. He started using prescription drugs. He got addicted. He needed money to buy these expensive pain pills. He actually stole from a family member, and he ended up in the law enforcement system and in jail. It was in jail that he was told for the first time that it was actually cheaper to buy heroin. He got out and bought heroin and became a heroin addict. He is now in treatment. He hit rock bottom, as he said, and I think it was because he had an overdose. This is something where we need to figure out a better way to get people diverted and use the criminal justice system to provide the incentive to get them into the right treatment program. It also supports recovery for youth and building communities of recovery, again focusing on our youth to get them to make the right decisions but also steering our youth who are addicted into the recovery they need. Sadly, this is now necessary in many of our high schools and in our colleges and universities. It also establishes a task force to review some of the recovery and collateral consequences. This is an interagency task force that is going to report back to us on what is truly working and what is not working in order to do a deeper dive to ensure we are using this money most effectively in order to make a difference. It has treatment services for women and veterans included. This is a special interest of ours in this legislation--expanding treatment for pregnant women who are struggling with addiction, again to avoid this horrible situation where babies are born with an addiction. It also supports care for our veterans. Our veterans right now can enter treatment, of course, following discharge with this legislation. This is important. Our veterans have some special needs and special circumstances--often trauma, PTSD, and other things related to their addiction. We find these veterans courts are incredibly helpful, to be able to have them surrounded by fellow veterans in order to make more progress. That is in here as well. Finally, the legislation incentivizes the States themselves to enact comprehensive initiatives to address the opioid and heroin abuse problem--the prescription drug monitoring program, for instance. This is very important. The Federal Government has a big role to play here. Think about it. If you are in one State and you are monitoring someone's prescription drug medications, knowing where they are going and how much they are getting to avoid overprescribing, if that person crosses State lines, it is very difficult. So our legislation expands on what can be done there to ensure that, for instance, my State of Ohio knows whether someone has gone to Kentucky, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Indiana, or Michigan to get prescription drugs. So the prescription drug monitoring program will work better for every State. Prevention and education on heroin abuses--this is to incentivize States to do a better job on the prevention and education side and, of course, to prevent overdose and to improve drug treatment. These are all aspects of this legislation. It is comprehensive because the problem is complex and requires a comprehensive approach. Here are some statistics--we have already talked about some this evening--that are shocking. We know that 28,647 Americans died in the last year for which we had data, which is 2014, from a drug overdose. The 2015 numbers will be higher than that. That is roughly 120 Americans dying every day. There were 27,000 diagnosed cases of neonatal abstinence syndrome in 2013, the last numbers we have. It is even worse this year. This means babies were born with an addiction. A baby is born dependent on opioids every 19 minutes in America. So while I am speaking today, there will be another baby born who is addicted. I have gone to hospitals in Cincinnati; in Lima, OH, to St. Rita's; to Rainbow Babies Children's Hospital in Cleveland, OH. They are incredible caregivers. My wife Jane was at Nationwide Children's Hospital today, actually, on this very issue. These are babies who are so tiny, you can almost hold them in the palm of your hand. They need caregivers to take them through a process where they go through withdrawal. And we are not sure what the long-term consequences are because we don't have the data yet because this is such a new issue. There has been a substantial increase over the last several years. In Ohio, the same thing I said earlier--750 percent increase in the number of babies diagnosed with neonatal abstinence syndrome since 2004. There has been a 750-percent increase in babies born addicted. These are the issues this legislation gets at. Again, it does so in a way that is not just bipartisan, which is important, and not just House and Senate, which is important--the House has its own companion bill, one the President will be able to sign into law--but most importantly, it is because of the input of people from all over this country, the experts, people who are recovering themselves, and those who are most affected by this, that this legislation makes sense, and not just for my State but for our country. The Judiciary Committee had a number of good witnesses. One was a woman named Tonda DaRe. Tonda DaRe is from Ohio. She had a daughter named Holly. On her 21st birthday, Holly, who had a bright future ahead of her--she was engaged to be married, and she had been very involved in her high school and active in sports--tried heroin for the first time. She became addicted. She went into recovery, and unfortunately, as in many cases, she had a relapse. At age 23 her young life ended in an overdose. Her mom, Tonda DaRe, set up an organization called Holly's Song of Hope. She testified before the Judiciary Committee about the importance of her work--talking to other mothers and fathers and sons and daughters about the devastating consequences of this heroin and prescription drug addiction. This legislation needs to be passed so that we can help Tonda. She testified on behalf of this legislation because she has looked at it and knows it will make a difference in her life and her community. This is an urgent problem, as I said earlier. It is also one we have a lot of bipartisan consensus around. There will be opportunities during this debate to hear from a lot of different people on a lot of different ideas on amendments to the legislation. That is good. It is good to have a debate. But I hope my colleagues on both sides of the aisle will keep focused on the importance of getting this done. It is important to get it done in terms of providing immediate help to our communities and also providing a structure to more effectively spend funds this year--and yes, we have funds to spend this year that have been appropriated consistent with CARA--but also next year and the year after and the year after. Some will support more resources, and that is fine. We need to have that debate. I myself think it is a priority, and we should be providing the resources to be able to deal with this issue. I would also urge my colleagues to ensure that we get this over the finish line. It is too important. We can't play politics with it. This is one of those issues, again, like so few around here, that got out of the committee without a single dissenting vote. We have done the right thing on a bipartisan basis to bring in the experts. We have a good solution to an urgent problem we all face. I am pleased with the vote tonight, and I urge my colleagues to have a good debate on the floor. Let's get this done for the sake of Tonda DaRe and so many other mothers, fathers, and others out there who deserve to have a little help in their fight against opioid addiction. I yield the floor.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I stand before the Senate to talk about legislation that was marked up today in committee that deals with the opiate addiction crisis we have in this country. Before I do that, and while my colleague is still on the floor, let me congratulate him and Senator Hatch, who is on the floor, for the legislation that was passed today that will now go to the President with regard to trade--and two provisions in particular: one that Senator Wyden just talked about, which has to do with ensuring that when you get an order against an unfairly traded import from a country because it is dumped or because it is subsidized, that you can't just take that product and shift it to another location to evade the Customs duties. That is called the ENFORCE Act. It is going to make a huge difference. I introduced it with him originally, and it is legislation that will help Ohio steelworkers and steel companies in particular, but it helps everybody who goes through the long process--which is a little better, now thanks to the Level the Playing Field Act--to get an order against a product that is not being sold here fairly, to ensure that some country doesn't just move it to another jurisdiction. I thank Senator Wyden for his hard work on that issue and ensuring that we can have a more level playing field. If it is level, we can compete and win, but when it is not level, it is impossible for our workers, our farmers, our service providers to be able to get a fair shake. So I thank the Senator from Oregon for that. The other is the BDS legislation, which didn't get as much play on the floor today because there were so many other things in this legislation, but there are countries that have boycotts that divest from and put sanctions on Israel in an effort to delegitimize Israel. In this legislation, it provides that if countries want to do business with us and do trade with us, they cannot put in place these discriminatory policies as to Israel. I thank the chairman and ranking member for that as well. This is very important legislation for us to be able to ensure that we can continue to stand by our friends in Israel so they are not treated unfairly, but rather, where trade is involved, we can use our leverage to ensure that they can be able to be treated with the respect that other countries have around the world. So those are two parts of the bill that I think are extremely important. I thank Senator Wyden and Senator Hatch, who was on the floor a moment ago, for their hard work on that.