Senator Corker: (11:50 AM)

• Spoke on the Justice Against of Sponsors of Terrorism Act.
  • "I do want to say, and I don't think many members are aware of this, but Senator Cardin and myself attempted throughout the weekend to set up a meeting with the White House to go over options that could in fact be more beneficial to our country and at the same time give some justice to the people of 9/11. I think many people here know there were also Saudi officials here seeking to try to come up with some option that might work better than the option that we all opted for with none other available yesterday. We were unable to get the president to convene a meeting. We had hoped with the secretary of state, who had I couple of conversations with, Secretary Kerry, but also I had conversations directly with the White House to set up a meeting between the president and Secretary Kerry, but of course Leader McConnell, Leader Reid, Ben Cardin, and myself, but also the two major sponsors of the bill. And the purpose was to see if there were issues with the bill that we voted on yesterday, was there a better route, was there another option that we could consider and could we develop a time frame where that could be considered to take us to an improvement over where we were yesterday. For reasons that still are unknown to me, that was not achievable."

 

Senator Portman: (12:12 PM)

• Spoke on opioid abuse.
  • "I think it's critical that we begin to fully fund this Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act, otherwise known as CARA, and do it now and not wait until the regular appropriations process in December. So that $37 million will help us stand up some programs, four in particular I want to mention this morning. One is the community-based coalition prevention grants. Second is the grants for access to overdose treatment. Third is the recovery grants. And fourth is the state incentive grants for a comprehensive response to this opioid issue. So in other words, we're dealing with prevention, education, treatment, and recovery, helping to get states more engaged and involved in this issue to help them so the federal government can be a better partner. On the prevention side, what it does is start to tell people what's going on. We're doing that here today on the floor, but specifically, to let people know what this connection is between prescription drugs and prescription drug overprescribing and abuse and heroin and fentanyl."

 

Senator Casey: (12:35 PM)

• Spoke on Wills Eye Hospital in Philadelphia.
  • "When I was here last week, I was talking about the hospital itself and the truly excellent work that is done at that hospital, and unfortunately to talk as well about the unfair treatment that hospital is receiving from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, we know by the acronym CMS. CMS is using an arbitrary ratio of the number of in-patients and out-patients to make the argument, faulty though it is, but to make the argument that Wills Eye is not a hospital and should be an ambulatory surgery center, which could have drastic implications and ultimately force Wills Eye Hospital to close down. This hospital is almost 200 years old. Last week, Wills Eye Hospital started an online petition on change.org so people could show their support for the hospital, and I wanted to share some of those comments today with members of the Senate."