Amy Klobuchar

I led that bill last year and we were not able to get it through the filibuster.

Congress was willing to come together on that last two-year transportation bill.

A bridge shouldn't just fall down in the middle of America, not a bridge six blocks from my house.

We need this to have the Justice Department function.

We were ministers of justice and that we did our job best when we had worthy opponents.

We really do believe we need functioning courts.

I think the door was opened, and we have come up with what I consider a reasonable compromise in this bill.

It is the pay-for-delay settlement that we have concerns about, Senator Grassley and I, Senator Vitter and Senator Franken.

So that is why we were coming up, Senator Grassley and I, with a way to sort of even the playing field.

It is entirely proper to put the burden on the drug companies to demonstrate that actually these have a pro-competitive, not anti-competitive impact.

Many more cases settle without pay-for-delay than with pay-for-delay.

It seems to me the evidence suggests that just putting it back to rule of reason should have--should do the trick based on the evidence that is being adduced by my colleagues on the panel.

You have an FTC which probably does not have the resources to match yours and the pharmaceutical industry.

What incentive do they have not to do it?

Pay-for-delay settlements are the most egregious form of antitrust violation in my mind.

I think that there would be benefits of billions of dollars from outlawing these reverse payment settlements.

The CBO, as we know, expects this legislation would accelerate the availability of generic drugs and save $4.7 billion over 10 years.

We urge Congress to take action on Senate bill 214, the Preserve Access to Affordable Generics Act.

I think they assume that because for a number of years they were settled without pay for delay.

That these particular type of settlements are delaying entry into the market and hurting consumers and the U.S. Government.

In fact, after the Supreme Court ruling, an industry analyst said in a CNBC interview that the court created a 'holy mess out of this.'

To me, when you look at the numbers and the change since those Circuit Court decisions, this is more than just about some patent litigation, this was about a deliberate effort to delay these drugs onto the market to increase profits on the…

Hatch-Waxman is supposed to be about--at least paragraph 4 certifications--challenging invalid or not infringed patents.

We are also a strong supporter of another bipartisan bill, Senate bill 504, the Fair and Immediate Release of Generics Act.

Allows operating companies to exploit the lack of transparency in patent ownership to win a tactical advantage that could not be gained with a direct attack.