While touring the state ahead of elections Nov. 6, U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill made a short stop at Jordan’s Place in Warrenton Monday, Oct. 29, to meet with volunteers and learn about what they do.

Jordan’s Place is an activity center for teens that was started after co-founder Kelli Clodfelter’s son, Jordan, died after a drug overdose. One of McCaskill’s significant policy initiatives as a senator has been to investigate and penalize pharmaceutical companies that contributed to the nationwide opioid drug crisis.

Clodfelter explained the mission of Jordan’s Place, to give young people in the community a safe place to have fun, while McCaskill asked questions about what the teen center has to offer. A small group of volunteers and members of the public were able to meet the senator during her visit.

McCaskill said the work of volunteers at Jordan’s Place is amazing. After learning that Clodfelter and others also work with Warren County’s drug court to help users understand the negative impacts of drugs in the community, McCaskill offered a suggestion of a federal drug court grant to help with the prevention effort.

Speaking of her work in the senate to combat the spread of opioid drugs, McCaskill said treatment and prevention are important, but also that pharmaceutical companies that aggressively pushed addictive opioid drugs into the market need to be held accountable.

“We’ve got to not just attack with treatment money, and money to keep places like (Jordan’s Place) going, and money for law enforcement to go after people who are pushing (drugs). We also have to look at the root of the problem, which is a pharmaceutical industry that basically lied to doctors, saying (opioids aren’t) addictive.”

Clodfelter later explained that she previously had met members of McCaskill’s staff through advocacy related to the opioid crisis. Clodfelter said she will always be happy to meet and speak with anyone seeking to combat the abuse of opioid drugs.

Health care, transportation funding

During her visit to Warrenton, McCaskill also spoke with The Record about two other important issues, health care policy and funding for Missouri’s underfunded state road system.

McCaskill said one of the major issues with the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) health care coverage is affordability for people who make too much money to qualify for government subsidies, and who don’t get health insurance through work. That includes many farm families, she said.

McCaskill said she supports a bipartisan bill, which has not yet been voted on in the Senate, that would address the affordability for those people who get health care coverage through the ACA (aka Obamacare). Taking that route would also preserve popular protections in ACA, such as for people with pre-existing conditions.

“We have to hold on to those consumer protections, while we fix the parts of the ACA that need fixing,” McCaskill said. “In other words, let’s keep the good parts and let’s work on the parts that aren’t working as well.”

On the topic of transportation funding, McCaskill said she supports passage of the proposed 10-cent fuel tax increase on Missouri’s election ballots next week. She said if Missouri had more money for transportation projects, the state could also get access to more matching funds from the federal government.

“I would like to see us do a bigger infrastructure project in Washington,” McCaskill commented. “I would be 100 percent supportive of any effort from President Trump to do that.”

U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill speaks during a visit to Jordan’s Place in Warrenton Monday, Oct. 29. With her is Jordan’s Place co-founder Kelli Clodfelter. The two discussed the roles of local and federal efforts to combat opioid abuse.