Tom Harkin: “I join Senator Enzi in thanking Senator Burr for being not only a very valuable member of our committee but I would say…”

“I join Senator Enzi in thanking Senator Burr for being not only a very valuable member of our committee but I would say the Senator's fingerprints are a lot on this bill we have before us. He has worked very hard on this bill and I think helped to improve it every step of the way over the last year. I was looking through the list of different things here. Senator Burr was one of the leaders in our working group on the supply chain, which we have in this bill to make sure those things coming from other countries have good manufacturing practices on them and we can keep track of them. The provision of clarifying the ``least burdensome'' standard on clinical data for device approval was also the result of the Senator's hard work. The Senator was also in the working group on the GAIN bill regarding antibiotic incentives for getting more incentives for new antibiotics. And there was a Burr-Coburn bill regarding enhanced reporting requirements for FDA, and that basically is also included in the bill we have in front of us. So in every respect, the Senator from North Carolina is a great member of our committee, a very valuable member of our committee. As I said, we are looking at the amendment he has now brought up, and I am sure, as Senator Enzi said, we will be talking about this in the next few hours and going into tomorrow. But I again want to pay my respect to the Senator from North Carolina and thank him for all the hard work he has done on this bill.…”