The House expects to finish passage next week on nearly 20 bills aimed at fighting the opioid epidemic, with an eye toward a conference with the Senate over the summer.
The House passed about 30 bills last week that range from boosting treatment options to stemming the tide of shipments of illegal opioids from overseas. Next week, the House will consider about 20 bills and a legislative vehicle that would combine all of the legislation into one package.
“Altogether, this will be the most significant congressional effort against a single drug crisis in history,” House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., wrote in an op-ed in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.
A bipartisan group of committee leaders this week released the Substance Use Disorder Prevention that Promotes Opioid Recovery and Treatment (SUPPORT) for Patients and Communities Act. The bill, H.R. 6, will serve as a legislative vehicle to wrap in all of the opioid legislation that the House passes.
“We anticipate that the vast majority of the bills considered both this and next week will then ultimately be wrapped into H.R. 6, process and timing of which is still being worked out by leadership,” a House aide told the Washington Examiner.
Democrats, however, say the bills won’t make a dent in the epidemic without more funding. About 42,000 people died from an opioid overdose in 2016, with about half of those deaths from the powerful opioid fentanyl, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore., pushed back on the criticism during the Washington Examiner’s “Examining Opioids” event on Thursday.
“I would suggest you could never outspend a Democrat, so I am not going to try,” he said. “What I am going to try to do is fix the policy.”
Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, pointed out during the same event that Congress has passed billions in new funding to combat the epidemic, including $4 billion in a March spending deal.
He added that he believes the Senate is “moving towards a package,” noting that committees are working on their own legislation over the next week.
Walden said he hopes the bills get through the Senate by August. He immediately cautioned that may be “a bit of a stretch.” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has canceled most of the Senate’s traditionally month-long August recess.
Another House aide said lawmakers expect to go to conference with the Senate to iron out differences among the slew of opioid bills.
“Ideally we would like to go to conference with the Senate and work on what they enacted there,” the aide said, noting that it is “not clear when the Senate is ready to act on the floor.”
The goal is to hold a conference in July, the aide added.
“I feel this is going to be a productive conference if we are able to do that.”
