Enough is Enough..
Friends, Following the most expensive Thanksgiving in history, high prices and supply chain issues don’t look to be going away before Christmas either. In fact, a new report last week said even Christmas trees will be more expensive and harder to get this year. Real North Carolinians are suffering because of the big government policies and reckless spending of Joe Biden – Enough is enough. On Thursday, Vice President Kamala Harris and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg came to Charlotte. I was hopeful they would address these issues that are impacting our community and state through higher prices for groceries, gas, and utility bills. Unfortunately, they instead continued to push for more reckless spending and tax increases that will make these problems worse. The Vice President repeated the debunked claim that their trillions in tax and spending will be fully paid for. Yet, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office confirmed their bill would put taxpayers on the hook for hundreds of billions of dollars. Instead of calling inflation temporary, urging Americans to just buy electric vehicles, and selling their proposals for even more government spending and bureaucracy, we need real solutions to help working families here in North Carolina. While many push for more reckless spending and ignore our challenges, I remain focused on solving problems. One of those problems is the opioid epidemic and fentanyl that has impacted so many families in every community. Last week, the Energy and Commerce Committee held a hearing on addressing fentanyl. This year, the U.S. drug epidemic reached a terrible milestone: 100,000 people died of an overdose. North Carolina saw a 37% increase in deaths over the past year, as 8 North Carolinians died every day from an overdose in 2020. Overall, since 2000, tragically 28,000 North Carolinians have died from drug overdoses. Last week at the hearing, a DEA official testified that there is “no question” that cartels are flooding the United States with fentanyl. We cannot tackle this epidemic of overdose deaths until we secure our border. Earlier this year, I went to our southern border to witness this crisis. At just one station, border agents told me they had seized 55 pounds of fentanyl so far this year. That is enough to kill 10 million Americans, or the entire population of North Carolina. Since my visit, border agents have seized enough fentanyl at the border to kill every man, woman, and child in the U.S. not just once, but seven times over. What is more frightening is the unknown – drug traffickers have become strategic and coordinate the timing of migrant crossings to divert border agents’ attention. There is no telling how much fentanyl is coming across that we don’t know about. Simply put – every day the Biden administration continues to ignore the crisis at the border is another day we lose in the fight against fentanyl. This is unacceptable. In 2018, I helped write bipartisan legislation to deal with the overdose crisis. President Trump signed our legislation into law, he secured our southern border, and we saw the first decline in overdose deaths in nearly 30 years. The pandemic and Biden policies that re-opened our border have reversed those critical gains. Now, Congress and the Biden administration must work together to help curb this epidemic. While some may want to ignore the challenges we face, every day I am committed to fighting for you. I will continue working to stop bad policy, focus on solutions, and ensure your voice is being heard. Until Next Week,
Image  Richard Hudson Member of Congress |