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House Republicans and Democrats joined forces on more than a dozen bills to fight the prescription opioid and heroin epidemic.
The Bipartisan Heroin Task Force's goal is to bring attention to the heroin and prescription opioid epidemic and to advance bills it believes have the potential to gain traction and funding, explained Rep. Tom MacArthur (R-N.J.), task force co-chair, during a Wednesday press conference.
Prescriber education, treatment of vulnerable populations, and upholding the rule of law are just some of the issues covered in the various bills, he noted.
Asked whether the group was lobbying to include funding for the opioid epidemic in a must-pass spending bill, Ann McLane Kuster (D-N.H.), co-chair of the task force, said that the group had considered it, and would be issuing a letter on that matter soon.
MacArthur said it was "confusing to progress" to advance programs at the federal level and then fail to provide the funding to implement them.
"For us to have progress at the federal level ... we have to have funding, robust funding, tens of billions of dollars in funding to help our country," he said. "We haven't defined numbers yet...but we will be asking our appropriators and others to make sure there's adequate funding for us to really do our jobs." However, he stopped short of saying where the money would come from for these proposed programs.