Friday, July 09, 2004


Yahoo! News - Senator's Tearful Plea Helps Pass Suicide Bill
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - For a few moments on Thursday, the only sounds in the U.S. Senate chamber were the sobs of a grieving father.

This was one of the most touching moments I have ever seen come out of the Hill.

Oregon Republican Gordon Smith took the floor to introduce a youth suicide prevention bill named after his dead son. With unusual speed, the Senate unanimously passed the measure within hours.

"He saw only despair ahead and felt only pain in his present. Pain and despair so potent that he sought suicide as a release. As a release," Smith said, recalling his son, Garrett, who killed himself in his college apartment last September, one day before his 22nd birthday.

The $60 million bill, which the U.S. House of Representatives has not yet taken up, would help states develop prevention strategies and would fund more mental health services on college campuses. More than 30,000 Americans kill themselves each year, and suicide is the third-leading cause of death for people aged 10-24.

New Mexico Republican Pete Domenici, who has been public about his daughter's schizophrenia, had gone home early but threw on a suit and dashed back to the Senate to sympathize with Smith. Domenici said he would make another push for the bill he has advocated for years that would require health insurers to treat serious mental illness the same way they treat physical illness.

It's a shame that they have managed to avoid paying for so long. Sometimes I am astonished at how ignorant (and greedy) people can be.

He also lashed out at fellow Republicans who had anonymously used a procedural move to block it.

"I don't know who you are yet," said Domenici, "but I'll find out."

Go get 'em Pete. It's too bad that it takes a personal tragedy in an elected official's life before these bastards will "do the right thing."