On the recordJune 25, 2012
after many months of bipartisan negotiation, I have high hopes that the Senate will vote very shortly to invoke cloture on the House message to accompany the Food and Drug Administration Safety and Innovation Act of 2012. I am pleased to report it is the product of excellent bipartisan collaboration on the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, which I chair, and productive conversations with our colleagues in the House. The House passed the FDA Safety and Innovation Act unanimously last week. Now it is our turn to do our part. The backbone of this legislation is the user fee agreement that FDA has negotiated with industry. I might just add this bill passed this Chamber about 3 weeks ago on a vote of 96 to 1. So it has strong bipartisan support. A sizeable part of FDA's budget comes from user fees that industry agrees to pay to allow FDA to more quickly weekly review product applications. We need to authorize FDA to implement those agreements if we want to keep FDA running at full steam, which is critical to preserving jobs at both the agency and in the industry and to ensuring that FDA has the resources to get safe medical products to patients quickly. I want to be clear. These agreements affect all of us by helping to maintain and create jobs in our home States. For example, in my State of Iowa, these agreements will support our burgeoning bioscience sector which saw employment grow by 4.5 percent between 2007 and 2008.…
