Committee will come to order. Mr. Debty attorney general, welcome to the commerce justice and science appropriations subcommittee which we will be hearing in department of justice fiscal year 2018 budget request. Im pleased to welcome you here to your first hearing before this subcommittee and im grateful that you and attorney general sessions have brought new desperately needed leadership to the doj. Youre input is helpful and necessary as we review the present Spending Priorities in order to ensure the countrys National Security and Law Enforcement needs are funded appropriately and sufficiently. This is a challenge in budget climates as you know. As Violent Crime has risen, the president proposes to decrease funding to the department of justice by 637 million in 18 for a new total of 28. 3 billion. Since the start of the new administration and during the early days of your tenure as the Deputy Attorney general im pleased that the department is refocusing on these core mission of enf
So i always talk to reporters why are you now saying somethingses that youre saying i said for months because aye been talking about real ideas and they dont cover them. I give speeches about educationing and they ignore it. I give speeches about health care and they ignore it, but you talk about it you talk about anything that has nothing to do with that, and they jump all over it. It leads the newscast. What a sad indictment on the state of the political debate in this country today. [applause] so from time to time i read the main tweet, but i never stop talking about the ideas you deserve to have. Theyre on my website go on it now. Not now, when youre done, marco rubio. Com and youll see we have a real plan to fix our tax code. We have a real plan to roll back regulation. We have a real plan to save Social Security and medicare. We have a real plan to balance our budget one of the most embarrassing moments in the last debate is when donald trump was asked about the debt and he said
Addicted to Prescription Drugs and overusing and misusing Prescription Drugs, and then the price of heroin on our streets so low and people going to heroin and also a combination of heroin and a deadly drug called fentanyl. So i very much want to thank senators portman, whitehouse and klobuchar for the work that weve been doing together over the last several years on this bill and to see this bill come to the senate floor. This is a very important piece of legislation that will help us address the Public Health epidemic facing my home state of New Hampshire and this country. This is something ive come to the floor on on several occasions before. And traveling around my state, i cant tell you the number of stories that ive heard from people in New Hampshire and what were facing, and the number of lives that are lost, the number of lives that are devastated by heroin and fentanyl and the misuse of Prescription Drugs. This is a lifeordeath issue in my state. The number of Drug Overdose de
No one really knows what the impact of that will be, but from a financial standpoint, im eager going to see a lot of businesses do that, and it will change the whole framework of health care in the United States. Recognizing people going to a 30 hour week . Upthere are people growing to only a certain amount of employees, and others reduce the hours. There was a story on the news in ogle the city about a man who was building a storm shelter. We had a terrible storm in may of last year, so hit a storm shelter company, and he had grown into 70 employees. With the new mandates under the Affordable Health care act, his Health Insurance costs were going to go up 250,000. He dropped his employees back to 50,000, and then all of a sudden it got delayed, and he had to let all of them go. That stopped his business from growing. , of whate first affect youre talking about a moment ago. We believe that governors should lead the way. Governors have to find solutions to the problems. A lot of issue
Incident remains under investigation this much is known has cause real pain for mr. Browns family as well as residents of ferguson and others across the country. Evens of unfolding have sparked a muchneeded National Discussion on police strategy, Law Enforcement response and race relations. The purpose of todays hearing is not to explore what happened in ferguson that day but other judicial system the purpose of todays hearing is to examine the effectiveness of programs for state and local police with surplus military equipment and exercises for planning and training. The issues to there not just about ferguson that affect communities across the nation. Says retake the deep dive into local lawenforcement agencies to explore the value of these programs to police the communities they serve, and taxpayers. Lets start by a thinking senator Mitch Paschal and her staff for cochairing this with me and our call date from missouri has spent a lot of time in ferguson we look forward to hearing a