Tom Harkin: “we are about to move to a vote on the FDA reauthorization bill, a bill which I have said earlier we spent more than 1…”

“we are about to move to a vote on the FDA reauthorization bill, a bill which I have said earlier we spent more than 1 year working on in committee. It has had a lot of input from Senators on all sides, including industry stakeholders and consumer groups. This is the result of a wide collaboration on all these issues. I wish to respond to a couple things my friend from North Carolina-- and he is my friend--said earlier about the amendment he was concerned about on the track-and-trace amendment. The Senator from North Carolina talked about speed. He said we were rushing this through. The vote in the Senate was 96 to 1. The House vote was unanimous. That doesn't happen if a bill is being rushed through. Anybody who tries to rush a bill is not going to get 96 votes in the Senate or a unanimous vote in the House. Again, my friend questioned how hard we tried to get the track-and- trace provision included in the conference report. I might turn the question around and question how hard the Senator from North Carolina and the Senator from Colorado worked to get this included. We have been working on this bill for over 1 year. My friend, a good member of the committee, and his staff has been very much involved in many aspects of this bill. So I wonder why the amendment was dropped on our staff 1 day before filing the bill at the midnight hour. I might also point out that on September 14, 2011, our committee had a hearing on the supply chain issue.…”