Political Quotes

“this has been a long and arduous process. Putting together the revised export provisions for drug and device exports would not have been possible without the help of my good friends and colleagues, the chairman of the Commerce Committee Tom Bliley, and the ranking member on the committee, John Dingell. Their efforts have made our goal of allowing easier exporting of these important medical products a reality, and I thank them and their staffs for all of their hard work. As many of you know, I introduced H.R. 1300 in May of last year. Mr. Rich Rakow, a constituent of mine in southwest Michigan, who works for one of the drug manufacturers in my district came to me during a town meeting about a problem his company was having exporting its products. It seems that under our current export restrictions, it is virtually impossible to ship drugs or medical devices out of this country for use in other countries, even if they meet the needs and requirements of the importing country. I found this, well, unbelievable, and directed Jeff Myers on my staff to look into the matter. What they reported to me was troublesome, to say the least. Manufacturers of pharmaceuticals, medical devices, and other blood products were moving overseas, taking with them high paying, highly skilled manufacturing jobs. Part of the reason for this is the current inability of the FDA to quickly turn around products submitted to them for approval.”