Unwavering commitment to make sure that the special counsel cannot be fired, that this investigation cannot be a victim of political interference. The president has indicated that he is averse to hearing about russia or considering its threat to this country. That aversion certainly sets back his ability to defend this country against the russian threat through sanctions and other means and deterrence that will assure that russia is made to pay a price so they do not do it again. In conclusion, let me just say that aversion must be overcome. We need to send a signal, as we did by passing sanctions, that we will take action against russia to stop it from interfering again in this election, that we will make sure that russia is made to pay a price, and that our constituents know that we will insist on a fair and independent investigation without political interference, passing legislation that is bipartisan. It has been offered by republicans as well as democrats, including myself, and it should be moved through the Judiciary Committee and to the floor of this congress. That message is all the more important now as this investigation penetrates the white house for the first time in the flynn conviction. Coming closer to the oval office itself, a real and robust congressional investigation of those efforts through the Judiciary Committee as well as obstruction of justice continues to be necessary. But we should combine our efforts to make sure that Law Enforcement and the judicial process move forward without political interference that will undermine its credibility. Thank you, madam president. I yield the floor. The presiding officer the senator from ohio. Mr. Brown madam president , i ask the presiding officer does the gentleman have a microphone . Mr. Brown thank you, madam president. It took West Virginia wisdom to know that. Thank you. Unanimous consent i ask unanimous consent that following my remarks the floor will yield to senators johnson and markey by u. C. Request. The presiding officer is there objection . Without objection. Mr. Brown thank you, madam president. I want to thank my colleagues nor warner and senator blumenthal for their words on the floor. Senator warners words yesterday especially defending special Counsel Robert Mueller and his leadership on the Senate IntelligenceCommittee Russia investigation. Senator warner is right we must protect the indeath of the integrity of the Just Department s independent investigation. Ohios Ukrainian Community knows the impact of unchecked russian aggression in russias efforts to undermine democracy around the world. Getting to the bottom of russian interference and protesting protecting our future elections are critical. My priority is getting to the bottom of what happened so that our democratic process is upheld and so we can move forward with the business we were sent here to do. Creating jobs, impacts combatting the Opioid Crisis that i will speak about in a moment, helping middleclass families. Efforts to delay that conclusion or interfere in the investigation i believe will not be tolerated by senators in either party. Thanks to senator warner for making that clear. Thanks to my colleagues in both parties who take this seriously. All of us have had serious conversations with members of both parties to discuss what all this means. And thank you for all of us working to get our own independent Senate Investigation completed. Its important we make clear to the American People that this is not a partisan issue. Its about the integrity of our elections. Its about protecting our country from foreign powers. Any attempt to discredit Robert Mueller and his investigation to turn it into a partisan issue makes us less safe as a nation. Lets let the Justice Department and the special counsel do their jobs. Lets get back to doing ours. The presiding officer the senator from ohio. Mr. Brown thank you. As we await senator markey and senator johnsons remarks, i want to set the stage for the reason for this, as we will see. The c. D. C. Released a new report last night, the centers for Disease Control out of atlanta, released a news report, a new report last night showing a massive increase in the number of americans dying of Drug Overdoses. My state is second to the presiding officers state, as the secondhighest rate of deaths per capita in the country. My state, unfortunately, for far too many people in ohio, more people die in ohio from opioid overdose than any other state in the country. Families, theyre torn apart. Children lose parents. Parents lose sons. Parents lose daughters. The c. D. Pins much of the blame for this epidemic on this relatively new deadly synthetic opioid fentanyl. Deadly fentanyl overdoses doubled in one year. This drug is 50 times stronger than heroin. Senator capito knows that. Senator johnson, senator markey, all of us, this whole senate is aware of that. This drug is being illegally trafficked into this country from mexico and china. We have a bill that we should pass today to help put a stop to this, the interdict act. I want to thank senator markey for his leadership on this bill. Also my fellow ohioan, senator portman, for his support. Weve been working on a number of issues, senator portman and i across party lines for months and months and months. The interdict act would provide more resources to customs and Border Protection agents to screen packages effectively and safely to stop fentanyl whenever possible at the border before it reaches akron, before it reaches toledo or dayton or smaller cities, chillicothe, and zanesville. This has the support of major Law Enforcement organizations including sheriffs and police officers. Our Law Enforcement officials better than anybody see the devastation that fentanyl causes our community. They know the risks their officers face dealing with this deadly substance. Thats why this bill needs to pass into law. Just this week the national f. O. P. , the fraternal Law Enforcement officers association, the Police Assisted Addiction recovery initiative, a recent phenomenon americans are dying in record numbers. Life expectancy in our country, i believe for the first time in the lifetimes of any of us, Life Expectancy in this country actually dropped last year. Think about that, madam president. We have made progress, as i mentioned in this body, i wear a pin on my lapel. Its the picture of a canary in a bird cage. Mine workers in ohio and elsewhere would take a canary down to the mines. If the canary died, the mine worker was on his own. He had no union Strong Enough or government that cared enough to help him. In those days people lived 45 years on the average, a child born in the United States in 1900. Today we live 30 years longer for a whole host of Public Health reasons, from medicare to medicaid to safe drinking laws to clean air, to minimum wage, to workers, all the things that we do. The first time i believe in our lifetimes when Life Expectancy actually dropped. And thats because of Drug Overdose for the second year in a row. In large part because of these overdose deaths. Why shouldnt we take steps today to stop this . We can do this by putting the interdict act on the president s desk immediately giving Law Enforcement the tools they need to keep fentanyl out of the country and off our streets. A senator would the gentleman yield . I thank the gentleman for yielding. Mr. Markey and i thank the gentleman for talking about this very important issue. Fentanyl is the killer which is descending upon every Single Community in the United States. Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that is 50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times more powerful than morphine. Fentanyl is the godzilla of opioids. Senator brown represents ohio. I represent massachusetts. The fentanyl epidemic has a bulls eye on ohio and a bulls eye on massachusetts. The deaths from fentanyl are skyrocketing. In 2016 upwards of 70 to 75 of all of the opioid deaths in massachusetts were because of fentanyl. Fentanyl was found in the blood system of those people who died. In 2000, people died in massachusetts last year from overdoses, but threequarters of them had fentanyl, meaning that if the epidemic was hitting the rest of the country at the same rate that it was hitting massachusetts, 75,000 people would have died last year with fentanyl in their blood system. So last night the centers for Disease Control and prevention released shocking new numbers on Drug Overdose deaths in the United States. These numbers show that a spike in deaths caused by fentanyl and other synthetic opioids. Here are the number numbers. This is nationwide. More than 42,000 americans died from an opioid overdose last year. That is a 27 increase over the number of americans that died from an opioid overdose in 2015. Got that number . Went up 27 in 2015 to 2016. Of the 42,000 lives lost to opioids last year, nearly half of them nationwide, just over 19,000, can be directly attributed to fentanyl and other synthetic opioids. The number is much higher in massachusetts. Fentanyl is overrunning our communities, laying waste to them. Theres no easy solution. But we know that we must staunch the flow of this drug before we lose an entire generation to this terrible killer. And that is why i introduced with senator brown, senator rubio, legislation to help those on the front lines stop this deadly drug from ever getting into our communities. The bill is called the interdict act, and it provides badly needed hightech equipment and other scientific resources to u. S. Customs and Border Protection to catch illicit fentanyl being trafficked into the United States mainly from china and mexico. When u. S. Customers and Border Protection detects a suspicious package or substance, it has had very good success identifying an illicit drug like fentanyls, with the help of hightech, handheld chemical screening devices and using these devices customs and Border Protection agents can quickly detect, identify and seize illicit drugs like fentanyl on the spot. Those rapid results provide Vital Information for Border Agents to continue their investigation and, if appropriate, proceed with seizure and arrest. And whats more, these devices and their ability to immediately identify fentanyl and other hazardous illicit substances also serve to safeguard the health and wellbeing of customs and Border Protection agents so that theyre not accidentally exposed to fentanyl. The agents, thats what these devices help to make possible. So we introduced the interdict act, Sherrod Brown from ohio, the presiding Senate President today, senator rubio, and weve added another 16 senators from both sides of the aisle. I would be glad to yield. Mr. Brown thank you, senator markey. I wanted to enter into the record, madam president , three letters that are dated yesterday and today. Actually one is from the National Fraternal order of police signed by chuck canter bury in support of this bill with their passionate reasons for why it matters and the second is from the federal Law EnforcementAgency Signed by mr. Stokes, who is a longtime friend of mine, and a third letter from the recovery initiated police addicted initiated police all making endorsements for this bill. I think its clear why this bill is so important. I think this bill got maybe two or three negative votes in the house of representatives. There is no organization that i know of that opposes it. I hear from people in my state consistently about how important this is from Police Organizations to parents to deputy sheriffs. Theres no reason we shouldnt be able to do this before we go home for christmas. Theres a lot of things we should be able to do before christmas, including the Childrens HealthInsurance Program. But this is one we know we can. There seems to be no substantive disagreement from any large number of groups of individuals that i can see. I hope we can move forward with this in the next few minutes. Mr. Markey will the gentleman yield . I thank the senator. Can i list the names of the organizations that support the bill to police can interdict and sop stop fentanyl. It is the federal Law Enforcement officers association, its the National Border control counsel, its the Police Assisted Addiction recovery initiative, the National Sheriffs association, the National Tactical officers association, the National Association of Police Organizations, the National Narcotics association, the american legion, International Union of police, International Chiefs association, the major county sheriffs of america and the Massachusetts Coalition of police. So its pretty much every single Law Enforcement agency, all levels in the country, say to please give this tool to us now so we can detect this incredible killer in our country. Three former commissioners of the United States customs and bored Border Protection support the interdict act. President trumps nominee to head the agency, kevin mcalean testify its that he supports getting more of these hightech scanners into the hands of cups tomorrows customs and border patrol. Despite working for months with Senate Leadership to try to secure authorization for funding, we cant seem to get this over the finish line so that in the new year they have these devices. The way it works, you put a device up next to a package it will tell you if its got fentanyl or not. Right now many Law Enforcement agencies wont even allow one of their police dogs to sniff for fentanyl because it will kill the police dog. Thats how dangerous it is. Thats why these Electronic Devices are so important. It ensures that we have minimized the exposure of our officers to these substances and at the same time dramatically increase the likelihood that we are going to identify the fentanyl in a package and, as a result, to deter these people from china or from mexico who bring it into our country and are killing us by the thousands. At 42,000 deaths next year, it is approxiamting the total deaths in vietnam, thats just one year 42,000 people. One year. Thats a terrorist attack of a magnitude on our own streets that is unimaginable and with these devices we dont completely solve the problem, but we put more weapons in the hands of our Law Enforcement officials, detection devices that can minimize the likelihood that these terrible people from china, from mexico principally can bring this stuff into our country. So this is a huge issue, it goes right to the heart of other seriousness of dealing with this issue, and my only hope is that we have an ability here to be able it to move this thing forward in a way that lets the American People say we understand the issues you want us to work on. We understand death. And the Opioid Crisis is at the top of the list. It is indiscriminate. It affects potentially every family. No one is immune to addiction. It could hit any family at name and fentanyl is the ultimate killer. Mr. Brown madam president , i thank senator markey and hope we can work things out with senator johnson on this issue. I would like to ask unanimous consent to put the following remarks in a different place in the record, madam president. The presiding officer without objection. Mr. Brown thank you. Yesterday a bunch much members of congress with health care paid for by taxpayers went to the white house and celebrated a handout for corporations sends jobs overseas, companies that shut down in mansfield, zanesville, lima and and moved overseas. And this is im still incredulous about this. Families in this country at the same time in this state of virginia, just a few miles from here, are getting letters in the mail saying their kids are about to be kicked off of their Health Insurance through something that was bipartisan and never interrupted for 20 years since chairman hatch and senator rockefeller and senator kennedy wrote this bill to create chip, and a number of us worked on