Executive Session

Floor Speech

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Mr. HAWLEY. Mr. President, earlier this week, the Missouri Department of Health issued a new report that shows that life expectancy actually declined in the State of Missouri last year. Worse than that, the report shows that life expectancy has been falling in my State for almost a decade. Death rates for Missourians between 15 and 34 years old rose by almost 30 percent between 2012 and 2018. The death rate for Missourians who are between 25 and 34 is at its highest levels since the 1950s. We know what is causing it. It is an epidemic of drug overdoses and suicides, along with a spike in crime, in our cities.

Here are the facts. Opioid-related deaths in Missouri have more than doubled in the last decade. The number of suicides is up by over 50 percent, and there is no end in sight. And it is not just Missouri. New data shows that deaths from suicides and drug overdoses are exploding nationwide. Suicides in this country haven't been so common since 1938. Alcohol-related deaths haven't been so high since the 1910s. Meanwhile, the surge in deaths from drug overdoses in this country is completely unprecedented.

These numbers are tragic, but they are more than that--they are the signs of a crisis. We are witnessing the slow-motion collapse of the working class in America.

All Americans suffer from the depths of despair, but we know from the evidence that it is working people and working families who are hit the hardest. So now the working middle of this Nation is facing a struggle to survive. You don't have to look far to see it.

I have seen it in the small towns of my State, in the places where TV cameras never go, where town squares sit half empty, where businesses stand shuttered, where you can buy fentanyl with the snap of a finger on any street corner.

I have seen it in country places where meth is so common, they tell me that dealers hang bags of drugs from tree branches for their buyers to retrieve--a literal landscape of despair and addiction.

I have seen it in the faces of young farmers who put a crop in and pray for rain and pray for Sun and pray for fair prices and then wonder if generations of family farming are going to end with them.

I have seen it from young mothers raising kids alone, working a job and trying to go to school at night, trying to shield their children from drugs and from the pathologies online.

I have heard it in the words of young men who graduated high school only to find no jobs, no place to learn a trade, and no hope for anything that is better.

This is the struggle of working life today. In my State, it is a struggle shared by White and Black alike, by everybody of every race, because of the breakdown of family and neighborhood, the loss of good work, and the epidemic of addictive drugs, which don't know racial boundaries.

This is a struggle we are in together. It is a struggle that brings us together. It is a struggle for the things we love together--for home, family, and country--and the future of this country will be defined by how we meet this challenge.

You can see all of this if you will look. The problem is this town will not look. This town is obsessed with partisan theatrics. This town is obsessed with money and influence and status. This town wants to keep its own good times going. The political elite here live in a world where the struggle of working Americans is just a human interest story that you read about right along with the gossip page.

But it is time for this town to take some responsibility. It is time for the governing class to admit that the policies it has pursued for decades on trade, on immigration, and on finance have helped to drive working people to this crisis. And it is time to acknowledge that a crisis for working America is a crisis for all of America. It is not enough for wealthy people in Silicon Valley to do well. By the way, those people don't need any more advocates in this city. They have lots of them already. It is working people who need advocates here, and it is working families who need a voice.

You know, working folks don't ask for much. They work hard. They love their families, they love God, they love the place where they live, and they want the opportunity to build a home there and a way of life that is prosperous and that is secure and that is meaningful and that they can pass on to their children. That is not too much to ask. In the America of the 21st century, that is not too much to expect. It is not too much to stand for and to fight for because it is the working people of this country who built this Nation. They are the ones who keep it going now, and they are the ones where this country's strength is found. It is the working people of this country--their future and their families--who are going to define the future of our country.

I would just say that this is what we should be debating. This challenge is what we should be confronting. This crisis is what we should be looking to and addressing because this is what is going to define our time.

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