William Bryan: “I thank the Chair, and I, again, express my appreciation to my colleague from Colorado for an extraordinarily clear and…”

“I thank the Chair, and I, again, express my appreciation to my colleague from Colorado for an extraordinarily clear and lucid explanation of what must appear to the folks at home, listening to this debate on television, as a very arcane, technical, esoteric kind of an argument. Let me try to distill his thoughts a little further, if I may. What we are talking about is money, big money, hundreds of millions of dollars, even billions of dollars. When that kind of money is on the table, all kinds of special interests come forward and seek to protect themselves. I want to comment a little bit further on that. One of my colleagues raised the question as to the propriety of adding this amendment to a Department of Defense authorization bill. I think there is a compelling argument as to why we should do so. The Department of Defense spends each year $900 million on drugs--$900 million. If the amendment authored by the distinguished Senator from Arkansas, of which the Senator from Colorado and I and others are cosponsors, is adopted, we save $30 million each year. So the relevancy of this debate is very much appropriately addressed to a DOD authorization bill.”