Democrats should get on board with legislation aimed at curbing opioid abuse, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said on the Senate floor Thursday morning.
“Now is the time to finalize it, as the nearly 200 groups who fight this epidemic in our states are advocating, because this issue is just too important to be caught up in partisan politics,” McConnell said, listing a number of groups in his home state of Kentucky who support the bill.
Republicans on a conference committee to combine the House and Senate versions of the opioid bill voted Wednesday to reject an additional $920 million Democrats were trying to tack on for addiction treatment programs. They released the final agreement Wednesday night, and the House plans to vote on it Friday.
“Americans are suffering, overdoses are surging across the country at an alarming rate, and communities are being torn apart,” Republican committee leaders said in a statement. “This epidemic deserves immediate attention. Working together, we’ve got a thoughtful and substantial solution, one that has already achieved near unanimous support in both the House and Senate, and will help every single community.”
Democrats refused to sign off on the final measure without the additional funds, but Republicans say those funds should be allocated through the normal appropriations process.
McConnell noted that Senate Democrats overwhelmingly supported the Senate version, called the Comprehensive Addiction and Recover Act, or CARA.
“There’s no reason our Democratic colleagues shouldn’t support this conference report now as well, especially given their support for CARA when the Senate voted 94-1 to pass it,” McConnell said.
The White House also has said it wants the additional funding tacked on, although White House spokesman Josh Earnest hasn’t said for sure whether President Obama would veto the bill without it.
The bill is aimed at helping curb the opioid epidemic, as more people have become addicted to prescription painkillers over the last decade. Overdoses from those painkillers and heroin kill more than 70 Americans a day.
