Diana DeGette

There has never been one agency in charge despite the red flags going up all of these years?

There is an increasing number of labs that are handling these bioagents, correct?

There is really no one agency in charge, is that correct?

We cannot legislate. We can do a lot, but we cannot legislate a culture change. It has to come from within the Agency.

This is obviously an alarming series of failures, but there were other problems at CDC that made this incident worse.

Like all of us, I am deeply troubled by what we have learned about this incident.

I think we can all agree the reports on this incident are bad.

I have been told for each dollar we spend, we save more than a dollar.

Medicare fraud wastes money and endangers the care of seniors and the disabled.

I would appreciate that.

I want to ask you, Ms. Barra, what are you doing, not just to change the structure and put these safety programs together and so on, but to change the culture of the company so that the company rewards people reporting problems, not…

Would you please provide that to this committee, the draft protocol?

That is just insane, isn't it?

That the most senior GM executives may not have known about a defect that caused more than a dozen deaths is, frankly, alarming

The company failed to inform customers and federal regulators of the deadly problem

These switches were bad from the start; they should have never been installed

We are still trying to unravel the facts that led to one of the worst automated tragedies of the last decade

I am very proud to be co-chairing the 21st Cures Initiative with Chairman Upton.

It was clear that the loan guarantee decisions were made on the merits, but as Mr. Davidson said today, the reason we have loan guarantees is because we want to encourage this type of investment, and it is, by nature, risky.

The report also highlighted what can happen when lawmakers work together on a bipartisan basis to pass legislation that addresses emerging medical needs.

As has been mentioned, I joined with Chairman Upton to launch the 21st Century Cures Initiative about a month ago.

Thank you very much, Mr. Waxman. And thanks, Mr. Chairman, for holding this hearing on the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology Report on Drug Innovation.

We applaud Chairman Upton, Representative Diana DeGette, and the committee members for undertaking the 21st Century Cures Initiative.

So if we can achieve that same level of success nationwide with the Affordable Care Act, and there's no reason why we shouldn't be able to do so, that could result in 17,000 fewer deaths per year.

Let's look at the successes, let's look where we need to make improvements, and let's work together to do just that.