New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said Tuesday that the death toll from the U.S. opioid epidemic is equal to “a Sept. 11 every 2½ weeks,” as he urged Congress to refill the fund that President Trump is eyeing to wage war on addiction.
The Trump administration says it plans to spend money from the Public Health Emergency Fund to fight the prescription painkiller and heroin problem, though last time Mr. Christie checked, it had about $66,000 in it.
“I don’t think that’s going to make it, everybody,” Mr. Christie told a field hearing of the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee at The Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore.
Mr. Christie didn’t say how much is needed to get the crisis under control, saying he will leave tough funding trade-offs to Congress.
However, he said the $1 billion package approved under President Obama didn’t cut it.
“I am not, quite frankly, impressed by $1 billion,” the New Jersey Republican said, adding that his state is spending $500 million of its own money to combat the problem.
Mr. Christie, who heads the White House’s commission on opioids abuse, said Congress should dole out block grants to states combat the problem but then follow the money.
“Congress should be demanding accountability in return for the block grant,” he said.
More than 60,000 people died from drug overdoses last year, driven in large part by the influx of synthetic opioids like fentanyl from clandestine labs overseas, according to government estimates.
The toll makes drug overdoses the leading cause of injury death in the U.S., killing more people than car crashes and gun homicides combined, and afflicting the old and young, rich and poor.
“Everything else pales in comparison to the breadth of this problem,” said Mr. Christie, who backed Mr. Trump last year after losing to him in the GOP presidential primary race.
Mr. Trump declared opioids addiction to be a public health emergency in October and left it to Congress to find new funding for the fight.
Senate Democrats want Mr. Trump to dedicate $45 billion in taxpayer funds toward the fight, though the administration hasn’t said how much money it needs to implement its policies.
Efforts to strike a year-end spending deal to keep the government open and wage the opioids fight hit new snags even as members of the House Oversight Committee called for bipartisanship in Baltimore.
The top two Democrats in Congress canceled a meeting slated for Tuesday with Mr. Trump, saying they didn’t see him as a viable partner after the president tweeted he did not see a path to a deal right now.
Democrats have accused Mr. Trump of talking tough on opioids but failing to follow through with new funding.
Some critics said he should have invoked the Stafford Act to free up funds from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Mr. Christie said he encouraged Mr. Trump to funnel the opioids fight through a public health emergency administered by the Health and Human Services Department, rather than using emergency powers that would trigger FEMA.
Mr. Christie cited his experience in dealing with FEMA in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, which devastated the New Jersey shoreline in 2012.
“I don’t want to be waiting for FEMA to give me naloxone,” Mr. Christie said, referring to a drug that reverses overdoses.
• Tom Howell Jr. can be reached at thowell@washingtontimes.com.
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