WASHINGTON _ Sen. Claire McCaskill said an "embarrassing, honest, mistake," led her office to say on Monday that she did not oppose a bill that hamstrung the Drug Enforcement Administration's ability to go after potentially illegal distributors of opioids because she was receiving treatment for breast cancer.
The bill passed Congress and was signed by then-President Barack Obama through a procedure called unanimous consent, where no member of the House or Senate raised opposition. McCaskill this week introduced legislation to repeal it after a Washington Post-"60 Minutes" joint investigation said that the measure, which passed in March 2016 after intense lobbying, has inhibited DEA's ability to go after suspected illegal distributors of opioids. The Post took McCaskill to task, and she apologized in a call with Missouri reporters on Tuesday.
McCaskill said she returned several days earlier than scheduled in March from the treatment.
"Someone on the staff knew that I was scheduled to be out that week for treatment, and I actually came back (to Washington, D.C.) a couple days early, and it was just an honest, sloppy, embarrassing mistake," McCaskill said.
But McCaskill acknowledged she would not have raised objections because she would have not known about the bill. Unanimous consent is often used to push noncontroversial bills, like naming of post offices, through the House and Senate. If a single member objects, the bill goes through more stringent vetting and voting.
"I actually wasn't aware of the bill," McCaskill said, adding that legislators are usually not privy to specifics of legislation on unanimous consent calendars if they are not on the "committee of jurisdiction" _ in this case the Senate Judiciary Committee _ that passes them to the floor of the House or Senate.
"This is one of those things that is scary about this place," McCaskill said. " ... Sometimes bills roll through a committee if Republicans and Democrats sign off on it with no objections. What happened in this instance was the Department of Justice and the DEA signed off on it. Now, as it turns out, when you get to the rest of the story it wasn't quite that simple."
She added: "I am taking responsibility for the mistake."
