Judd Gregg: “there have been a lot of representations by the Senator from Massachusetts as to why we are in this position. He need…”

“there have been a lot of representations by the Senator from Massachusetts as to why we are in this position. He need only turn to himself to answer that question. When we marked up this bill in committee, there was an unequivocal, unquestioned agreement, in my opinion, that we would reach accommodation on two parts of this bill. There was significant discussion about the 45-day rule and about the fact that what the language in the bill represented, what the sponsor of the bill represented the language to do, was the opposite of what the language did. It was agreed to by the Senators there--both Republican and Democrat--that that language would be corrected. There was an agreement between the Senator from North Carolina and the Senator from Tennessee that the language dealing with the bioequivalency issue, which is critical in this bill, would be corrected before it got to the floor. The essence of this bill was presented to the committee on Thursday and marked up. Now it is on the floor. That is rather prompt action, to say the least. But the understanding was that, before it got to the floor, these two items would be corrected so that the bill would be in the proper form when it reached the floor. The reason there is delay occurring is that there continues to be a stonewalling of the agreement that was reached in the committee as to correcting those problems.”