Gilbert Gutknecht: “a couple of weeks ago I came to the well of the House, and I said that the FDA had declared war on American consumers.…”

“a couple of weeks ago I came to the well of the House, and I said that the FDA had declared war on American consumers. Now the battle is joined. Mr. Speaker, I want to share a brochure, a little brochure that my staff and I have put together. On the cover it says, ``If we want to allow Americans to keep and spend over $600 billion during the next 10 years, here is a good place to start.'' Then at the bottom you have a picture of some pharmaceutical capsules. Then if you open the brochure, the second page says, ``That is right. According to the CBO,'' that is congressional language for the Congressional Budget Office, they are our official bean counters, ``According to the CBO, American seniors will spend over $1.8 trillion.'' By ``seniors'' they mean only those people who are 65 years of age or older. So over the next 10 years, the CBO tells us that seniors alone will spend over $1.8 trillion on prescription drugs. Now, a conservative estimate, not done by me, but by experts who are a whole lot smarter than I am, a conservative estimate would be that we can save 35 percent by allowing free markets to work. Again, I am not particularly good at math, but 35 percent times $1.8 trillion works out to $630 billion.”