Steve Scalise calls Democrats ‘disgraceful’ for skipping hearings, warns fentanyl kills 300 a day

WASHINGTON – House Majority Leader Steve Scalise called Democrats “disgraceful” Tuesday for skipping a series of hearings on the ongoing border crisis before warning that fentanyl overdoses are killing 300 Americans per day.

“As we all know, there is a crisis at our southern border. While the vice president, who was supposed to be the czar of the border, will not go down to the border, we’ve gone down multiple times,” Scalise (R-La.) told reporters.

“In just these last two weeks, we had a number of committees holding hearings at the border,” he went on. “Not only did they talk about the crisis at the border … the Energy and Commerce Committee had a hearing specifically on the fentanyl crisis.

“You know, today, almost 300 young people will die from fentanyl overdoses,” the majority leader added. “Yesterday, nearly 300 died. Tomorrow, nearly 300 young people will die every single day in America because Biden opened the border.”

In 2021, the most recent year for which statistics are available, approximately 292 Americans died each day from fentanyl overdoses, according to the National Institutes of Health. The potent synthetic opioid has been linked to about 196,000 US deaths between 2018 and 2021.

In addition to the Energy and Commerce Committee’s Feb. 16 field hearing on fentanyl in Midland, Texas, the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing on Feb. 23 in Yuma, Ariz., while House Homeland Security Committee members traveled to El Paso the following day.

In all three cases, most Democrats opted to give the field hearings a miss, with Judiciary Committee ranking member Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) and Congressional Progressive Caucus chairwoman Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) calling them “a brazen act of political grandstanding.”

“I think it’s disgraceful that a majority of Democrats refuse to even show up at these hearings,” Scalise fired back Tuesday. “These are full committee hearings – Republican, Democrat – where citizens are coming, law enforcement officers are coming, in their communities talking about the problems that Washington can fix. President Biden could fix these problems today, and he refuses to.”

The majority leader added that House Republicans would continue to hold hearings across the US, whether Democrats want to take part or not.

“We’re going to continue doing this to get that feedback from people who are struggling because of the weight of the problems coming out of Washington so that we can have Washington better respond to those hard working families,” he said. “If Democrats want to be a part of that, we’ve invited them and welcome them to be a part. If they want to sit on the sidelines and let these families struggle without even showing up for work, we’re going to show up for work. And we’re going to bring those bills.”