WASHINGTON, DC — As Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA, Dist. 23) uses conservative lawmakers’ refusal to raise the $31.4 trillion debt ceiling to negotiate $4.5 trillion in GOP budget cuts, Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI) reports federal law enforcement leaders say such cuts would worsen the opioid epidemic.
Raising the debt ceiling would pay bills the U.S. already agreed to pay, a national debt increased by $7.8 trillion under President Donald Trump, 24.8 percent of the current debt. The debt limit does not authorize new spending, according to the US Treasury. It simply allows the government to finance existing legal obligations that Congresses and presidents of both parties already made. President Joe Biden has agreed to negotiate the upcoming budget separately, but not with the debt limit vote as a bargaining point.
Rhode Island has been especially hard-hit by the national opioid epidemic, with the seventh highest opioid overdose death rate in the US at 30.8 percent with 326 deaths in 2016. The state has won recent legal battles won against opioid manufacturers, aiding local efforts to mitigate the scourge, but the problem lingers.
Reed, a senior member of the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies (CJS), questioned FBI Director Christopher Wray and U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) Administrator Anne Milgram about the real-world impacts of the proposed GOP budget cuts, including efforts to curb the opioid epidemic.
Reed focused on efforts to stop the flow of fentanyl, an illicit drug that is 100 times stronger than morphine, can kill unsuspecting users quickly, and is responsible for a surge of accidental overdose deaths in the United States. Senator Reed noted the House-passed Republican bill that would likely mean 22 percent cuts to the FBI, DEA, and Customs and Border Protection.
Wray said the result of the proposed GOP budget cuts would significantly harm federal efforts to curb distribution of the drug in responding to the opioid epidemic.
“So, a cut of that magnitude would be disastrous not just for the really hardworking public servants, career law enforcement professionals of the FBI, but more importantly, in many ways, on the American people that they are sworn to protect. It is not uncommon for me to get briefed on single seizures, from probably every state represented on this subcommittee, single seizures of enough fentanyl to wipe out an entire state. One operation, one seizure, by one squad, in one field office. So, a cut of that magnitude would mean countless seizures that would not happen and countless more fentanyl pills affecting neighborhoods all over this country,” Wray told Reed.
Reed also noted that the Republican cuts would inhibit the FBI’s ability to grow its cybersecurity force.
“We need more resources for cyber, which is why our enhancement asked for that, not less. And a cut would mean scores more attacks on American critical infrastructure, American hospitals, American schools, American 9-1-1 call centers, from nation states and cybercriminals alike. So, again, it would be the American people who would be hurt the most,” Wray agreed.
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