Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) believes his bipartisan mental health reform bill is picking up momentum and will get a hearing later this month in the Senate health committee.
Murphy has introduced the bill with Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy (La.), and it is intended as companion legislation to a House bill championed by Rep. Tim Murphy (R-Pa.).
“We feel like with a hearing scheduled in the HELP committee later this month, the first hearing in the HELP committee on mental health in three years, and that’s amazing to think about, that we’re poised to move this bill,” Sen. Murphy said at a forum hosted by National Journal on Wednesday.
Rep. Murphy has cast his bill as a response to mass shootings. However, reflecting the sharp divide on gun control measures between the parties, Sen. Murphy cautioned that mental health is not enough to stop the violence.
“We shouldn’t fool ourselves that we are going to cure the nation’s epidemic of gun violence by fixing a broken mental health system,” he said.
Reflecting the momentum around mental health reform, the Senate’s No. 2 Republican, Sen. John Cornyn (Texas), has introduced a separate measure and is reaching out to Democrats on it. His bill, backed by the National Rifle Association, uses grants to incentivize states to send mental health records to the national background check database.
[For more of this story, written by Peter Sullivan, go to http://thehill.com/policy/heal...mental-health-reform]
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