September 21, 2024
Dear Friends,
This week, I returned to Washington to find Congress in a discouragingly familiar place — just days away from a devastating government shutdown. House Republicans have spent months kicking the can further and further down the road, squandering an entire year of precious legislative time by forcing Congress to consider government funding bills based on Donald Trump’s Project 2025. Republicans know these measures have no chance of becoming law. But just like last year, the GOP’s refusal to reach across the aisle and find a bipartisan compromise has left us on the brink of a shutdown that would bring real pain for families across our nation.
I came to Washington to get things done — not to grandstand. So, while Republicans scramble hopelessly to execute the extremist policies of Project 2025, I’ve been hard at work delivering real solutions to the problems Americans face every day.
Tackling the overdose crisis
Throughout my time in Congress, I’ve led the way on efforts to combat the crisis of opioid addiction that has devastated so many of our communities. I’m honored to serve as Co-Chair of the Addiction, Treatment, and Recovery (ATR) Caucus, where I work across the aisle to reduce stigma and improve access to treatment for those struggling with the disease of addiction. Yesterday, I participated in a training hosted by the ATR Caucus to help more people learn how to access and administer naloxone, a lifesaving over-the-counter medication that can reverse the effects of a drug overdose within minutes. And I’ve pushed hard to advance legislation like my Mainstreaming Addiction Treatment (MAT) Act — signed into law last year — to eliminate outdated barriers that prevent people from accessing other proven addiction treatments like buprenorphine.
Taken together, these efforts to bolster access to addiction treatment are paying significant dividends. Recent nationwide data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) showed an unprecedented year-over-year decline in drug overdose deaths of more than 10 percent — with some states reporting even greater decreases. Thanks in part to the increased availability and affordability of addiction treatment medications, we’re seeing a dramatic reversal from recent years when fatal overdoses routinely increased by double-digit percentages. If this trend continues, experts say more than 20,000 lives could be saved across the United States each year. Going forward, I’ll keep fighting to ensure our continued progress in this space as we work toward a future where no family has to endure the pain and loss so many have already suffered.
Standing up for our veterans
Just over two years ago, President Biden signed the Honoring our PACT Act into law. This legislation represented one of the largest expansions of benefits in VA history — a comprehensive bill to extend earned benefits and healthcare to more than 3.5 million veterans who were exposed to burn pits or other toxic substances during their service. I was particularly proud that the bill included provisions from my Fort McClellan Health Registry Act, which called on the VA to conduct a long-term study on the health impacts experienced by veterans exposed to toxic substances at that base.
This week, I joined Representative Glenn “GT” Thompson of Pennsylvania to lead a bipartisan letter to the Department of Veterans Affairs urging them to provide an update on the implementation of that study. The veterans who served at Fort McClellan, including those from our Capital Region, deserve answers about the potential long-term health effects of the toxic substances they encountered there. I’m committed to making certain they get those answers and to making sure our country can pay for the true costs of war. Toxic-exposed veterans have held up their end of the bargain, and it’s time for us to hold up ours.
My Democratic colleagues and I remain steadfast in our commitment to putting people over politics and delivering real results for the American people. House Republicans, on the other hand, have once again chosen brinksmanship and extremism over collaboration and compromise. As we inch ever closer to a disastrous government shutdown, we owe it to our communities to come together and find commonsense solutions to the challenges they face. So next week, it is my fervent hope that we can stop wasting the American people’s time and get to work on a bipartisan spending bill that delivers essential funding for the federal programs that millions of American families rely on. Our constituents deserve nothing less.
As always, thank you for reading.
Your friend,
DID YOU KNOW?
My office and I are working to make sure you remain informed with the latest updates and recommendations from federal agencies. With that in mind, here is some information that may be of interest to you:
- Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of State launched a new version of the Smart Traveler Enrollment Program (STEP)!
- STEP is a free service to allow U.S. citizens to enroll their trip abroad so the State Department can quickly and accurately contact them in case of emergency.
- By enrolling your trip in the STEP Program, you can:
- Get real-time updates about health, weather, safety, and security in the country to which you are traveling
- Plan ahead using information from the local U.S. embassy
- Help the embassy or consulate contact you if there is an emergency like a natural disaster, civil unrest, or a family emergency.
- To learn more about the STEP Program or to enroll your trip, you can visit step.state.gov today!
