Mr. Speaker, about 2 weeks ago a number of us came to the floor to speak on market access, and that is the ability of Americans to purchase medications anywhere in Canada, Ireland, England, France, Germany, Italy, wherever they get the…

what do you think, given they have projected, I think it is $1.8 trillion over the next 10 years that seniors will be spending on medications, but if we had access to this bill and it was in place, what would be the savings to both the…

I appreciate that. So what you are saying is that unless it is FDA-approved, it cannot come in, and it is FDA-approved, meaning the Food and Drug Administration, which is the overseer, the czar of what is safe, approves it, then it can be…

reclaiming my time, you should take a little solace in the fact that they have decided to go to scare tactics because they know this is not about price controls. This is about letting the market determine the price that we can pay, and…

The truth is, Mr. Speaker, that we had an original bill that was going to use market forces to bring competition between generic medications versus name-brand medications. That was projected to save the taxpayers and the consumers and the…

I rise in support of the Ready to Teach Act. This bill takes important steps toward one of the most important goals for our Nation--filling our schools with committed, talented teachers. The shortage of qualified teachers in our country…

Well, my worry is not only do we not know the standard for our exit, and that before you get into any military engagement, you should know what your exit strategy is; that because we have 168,000 troops based now in all of Iraq, with no…

As a former staff person who worked for a President, I believe that every staff person in that White House who was sitting on the side cringed when they heard that, because you cannot but think that there was a President whose rhetoric got…

But we are united in our view that an administration should not mislead the America people; that a person who gave the President the wrong information needs to be held accountable because all of our reputations are on the line when the…

The fact is among us four we had different opinions and votes on whether we should or should not go to war, whether there was a case for a war.

The fact is that there is nothing that has gone on post the war in Iraq that we could not have seen ahead. Nothing new. There was no plan for the occupation. In fact, there is no plan for the exit. We have 158,000 troops based there as far…

Well, heads would have rolled. You cannot allow the President of the United States to have gone up on any speech, let alone a State of the Union, to address the Nation and in this case, this State of the Union was unique, on the precipice…

I checked that statistic. It has been 69 days since the President on the Lincoln aircraft carrier declared our mission complete and 70 Americans have died; 69 days, 70 Americans since May 1.

Because as we talk about this memo from Niger and how it got into the speech, how it got into the British dossier for the justification for the war, what is equally telling and missing in the debate is the discussion of reconstruction in…

I can feel the foam and the lather building up. We would not be arguing for 2 weeks whether Congress should call the inquiry an investigation or not. There would be a full-blown investigation, and it would be proper. Because the President…

What are the consequences of what we are talking about? I will give an example. When we were debating the tax bill a couple weeks ago, we found out after the fact because we only had an hour to debate this major tax bill that 12 million…

This bill allows competition between generics versus name brand, so we get the best price. It allows us to have competition whether we want to buy here in the United States, England, France, or Germany, and allows competition between those…

the fact is we would have competition. It is a Gutknecht-Emanuel bill with a number of the gentleman's colleagues on his side and a number of colleagues on my side. The three provisions to this bill, A, allow generics to come to market…

I have talked about choice and I have an amendment, a bipartisan amendment, to offer people choice between generic versus name brand drugs that would reduce prices so people could pick cheaper drugs. Also part of the provision allows…

like the preceding speaker before me from Tennessee, my good friend, the Dooley-Tauscher bill, I think, addresses the right priorities, the right common values we have. It does not try to end Medicare as we know it. It keeps Medicare, that…

what is missing from the debate about Medicare this week is how to make medications more affordable at affordable prices and more accessible to all Americans of all ages. And this is not a partisan problem. It is an American problem. We…

I agree with a number of our preceding speakers who have talked about the importance of Medicare and why their principles and values are different than some of our other colleagues. Tonight I would like to address another subject in the…

we are about to take up the prescription drug bill, and a group of Democrats and Republicans have come together on an amendment to the legislation that is the free market prescription drug bill. It has three components. One is to bring…

nearly a month ago, this body passed a $350 billion tax cut that benefited primarily the top 1 percent in the country. Warren Buffett and others, who although would benefit from it, spoke against that tax cut. Prior to that evening, the…

Tomorrow in a bipartisan fashion with about six Republicans and six- or-so Democrats, we will be introducing an amendment to the prescription drug bill that focuses on bringing competitive forces to the pricing of prescription drugs so we…