July 13,2016

Wyden Floor Statement on Opioid Bill and Mary Wakefield Nomination

As Prepared for Delivery

I’d like to address two issues today, both of which are examples of how the Senate is leaving work undone on its way out the door. First I’d like to begin with the opioid bill.

If ever there was an issue that should be unifying to the Congress – that should bring Democrats and Republicans together to surmount a challenge – it should be the raging crisis of opioid addiction in America. This crisis is indiscriminate of politics and geography. It is ripping through our communities like wildfire. A recent editorial in one of my home state newspapers captured the extreme urgency of this struggle with the headline, “Opioids are winning.”

Now after months of work, the Senate and House have come up with a bill. Colleagues, here’s my take on the final product. This bill is a half measure, the work is not complete, and nobody should be doing victory laps. The reality is, this proposal leaves on the table an awful lot of opportunities to fight the battle against addiction.

A landmark study that came out a handful of months ago found that 80 percent of people hooked on painkillers or heroin aren’t getting treatment. Under this bill, the waiting lines won’t get much shorter. The thousands of babies born each year with an addiction to narcotics – this bill won’t be enough to bring that number down to zero, where everybody knows it should be. In short, opioids will keep winning the war.

The package before the Senate has the kernels of a meaningful game plan, but in my view, it’s a hollow piece of legislation. It sets up programs that could be a big help to people who are struggling to get their lives back on track, but it doesn’t make the investments that would deliver on that promise.

Senators should know that doing only half the job now means that members will be leading with their chins when the appropriations process returns later this year. In this bill there’s a program for pregnant women and new mothers suffering from an opioid use disorder. There’s a program to help states take important strides when it comes to prescription drug monitoring, and there’s better tracking within the VA. There’s a plan to strengthen the networks of support in our communities that are best equipped to reach out to people who need help and fight addiction – physicians, employers, the criminal justice system, and more.

The bill, looking big picture, green lights the National Institutes of Health putting new energy into the development of safe, non-addictive, effective, and affordable drugs and treatments for chronic pain. And it sets up a task force and grants for states to construct what I see as a fresh approach to pain management and opioids – including education programs, treatment, recovery efforts, prescription monitoring, and strategies to prevent overdose and loss of life.

Getting those proposals off the ground is a first step, but the Senate is about to head home and put off the issue of funding to a later date. Nobody should be celebrating until the Congress finishes the job in the appropriations process.

And colleagues, there are also big questions about some particular pieces of this package. I’m extremely concerned, for example, about a provision that gives 75 million dollars in special kickbacks to the manufacturers of opioids that are considered so-called “abuse deterrents.” I believe it is wrong for this bill, which does only half the job for Americans struggling with addiction, to give an unjustified windfall to drug companies.

I offered an amendment that said let’s get rid of this windfall, and let’s redirect that money to help pregnant women enrolled in Medicaid – women of limited means who are struggling to fight addiction and get back on track. But my amendment was defeated by members on the other side. So colleagues, let’s be clear about what that means. This bill does not put funding into the programs that would help Americans who need help overcoming addiction, but it does give a 75 million dollar windfall to drug companies. In my view, that’s a tough imbalance to explain.

Here’s my bottom line, colleagues. There’s a lot of work to go before the Congress can take a victory lap on its opioid legislation. I’ve heard stories like those again and again across my home state, which, it pains me to say, ranks fourth-worst in the country for abuse of opioids. A lot of those stories involve Oregonians who go from pills to heroin to a tragic ending. I’ve heard from doctors and pharmacists about the dangers these drugs pose and the incredible difficulty of treating pain safely. I’ve heard from advocates and community leaders who are doing everything they can to fight the crisis but still see it growing, particularly among young people. I’d wager that every member of this body is hearing similar stories.

So my colleagues and I on this side of the aisle will be here in the months ahead, and we will call on Senators to finish the job. Until then, the opioid crisis will continue raging unabated, lives will continue to be lost, and families will continue to be torn apart.

M. President, I’d like to turn to another subject. That is the yearlong obstruction of a supremely qualified nominee, Dr. Mary Wakefield, who is the President’s choice to be the Deputy Secretary of Health and Human Services.

Dr. Wakefield’s nomination has sat in Capitol Hill purgatory longer than any other choice for Deputy HHS Secretary in history. And it’s for reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with her top-notch qualifications or her job. I’d like to address what’s causing the holdup directly, but first I want to talk about Dr. Wakefield and the vital role she’s nominated to fill.

Dr. Wakefield is up for the number two spot at HHS, which would make her the “Chief Operating Officer” of the department that takes on some of the biggest challenges this country faces, including battling the opioid epidemic.

  • HHS also manages the biggest and most important health care programs in the country:  More than 53 million Americans in Medicare and more than 72 million in Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program
  • It’s the department on the front lines in the battle against Zika
  • It runs the Centers for Disease Control
  • The Food and Drug Administration
  • The National Institutes of Health
  • Our child welfare and family support programs and more.

In my view, Dr. Wakefield is without question the right person to be Deputy Secretary. She’s somebody who’s seen the American health care system from all sides. She comes from North Dakota, where she spent years caring for patients as a nurse. She sought out more opportunities to help people by working in policy and managing health programs. She earned a Master’s degree and a PhD. She distinguished herself in academia. She even served as a Legislative Assistant and Chief of Staff here in the Senate. And Dr. Wakefield has proven herself in the administration as the head of the Health Resources and Services Administration. It’s my judgement that you’d have an awfully hard time finding a stronger candidate for this job.

When the Finance Committee met in February for a hearing on Dr. Wakefield’s nomination, she was cheered on by Senators from both sides of the aisle. My friend Chairman Hatch said Dr. Wakefield has an, “impressive background,” and he added that she has “a reputation for being a problem solver.”

Senator Hoeven, who introduced Dr. Wakefield before the committee as her home state Senator, said, “…she is a dedicated public servant and a hardworking health care advocate.”

He made the important point that Dr. Wakefield is a strong advocate for rural health. She believes – as everyone in this body does – that Americans deserve access to high-quality care regardless of their zip code. And she’s walked the walk throughout her career finding creative ways to improve health care in rural America. Senator Hoeven encouraged the Finance Committee to support Dr. Wakefield’s nomination and “send her to the full Senate for confirmation.”

Unfortunately, the process of moving this highly qualified nominee forward has ground to a halt. This occurred in two stages.

First, in February, Senator Grassley indicated that he would put a “hold” on the nomination, on the ground that he and other Republican Senators had not received adequate responses to questions they had raised about Planned Parenthood of America –These questions had absolutely nothing to do with anything that Dr. Wakefield had been involved in.

In any event, Senator Grassley’s questions were answered, months ago. But at soon as that happened, another objection arose. In March, the Republican members of the Finance Committee sent a letter to the HHS Inspector General raising questions about a complaint against the State of California regarding the application of the so-called Weldon Amendment. That amendment prohibits the recipients of appropriated funds from discriminating against health care providers who do not cover abortion services. We were told that the Wakefield nomination could not be considered until the issues regarding California and the Weldon amendment were resolved. 

Once again, this had absolutely nothing to do with Dr. Wakefield’s nomination. She was not a subject of the investigation, she did not work in California, and there was no allegation that she has been involved in any way in the matters being investigated.

Several weeks ago, the HHS Office of Civil Rights concluded its investigation of the California and the Weldon amendment. It concluded that the Weldon Amendment had not been violated, or really even implicated, because none of the parties bringing the complaint were even covered by the Weldon amendment. As a clear matter of law, there was no violation.

At that point, the deck should have been cleared. There were no issues related to Dr. Wakefield’s nomination, and even the issues unrelated to her nomination had been resolved. So, one would assume, the Finance Committee should have been able to move forward with the nomination.

Not so. My understanding is that Chairman Hatch and the Republican members of the Finance Committee are still unwilling to favorably report the nomination. So delay has turned into obstruction.

A highly qualified nomination is being needlessly blocked, for reasons completely unrelated to her qualifications and to the position that she has been nominated to fill. Regrettably, this seems to be one more case where the majority is putting politics ahead of public interest.

Our constituents expect more. When it comes to the consideration of vital nominees and legislation that purports to take on serious national crises like the opioid epidemic, the Congress ought to be doing its job – not making political points and passing half-measures.

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