Chuck Grassley: “Mr. President, we have a situation here where the latest argument has been that when we wrote the bill 4 years ago…”

“Mr. President, we have a situation here where the latest argument has been that when we wrote the bill 4 years ago, providing pharmaceuticals for seniors under Medicare, we went one step too far by saying the Secretary of Health and Human Services should not interfere in plans negotiating drug prices. Well, I want everybody to understand that we took this language from several different Democratic bills which had been introduced because I wanted this program to be as bipartisan as we could make it. So we had Senator Moynihan introducing President Clinton's bill in 1999 which had that language in it. We had a Daschle-Reid bill in the year 2001 which included that language. We had a House bill in 2001 which included that language. We had a Gephardt-Pelosi-Rangel-Stark-Dingell-Stabenow bill--Senator Stabenow now--which had this language in it. So I want people to know that as to this language which they now think should not be in this legislation--the bipartisan approach--we took this language because we thought this would be one step further toward making this whole program bipartisan because we do not have enough bipartisanship in the Congress now.”