Gilbert Gutknecht

And we are not talking about cutting the amount of revenue to the Federal Government; we are talking about creating that revenue in a new and more efficient way.

It is almost unbelievable. If we could get Americans to just think about this, because we all pay the taxes. I mean Paul Harvey often says that businesses do not pay taxes; people do. If you could get people to just think about this, that…

If I could just say, we have talked about capital, and we have talked about big business, and we have talked about investors and manufacturing, but I am told that when we talk about small business, it is where we really see the benefits…

Let me just come back to that number. The gentleman said $6 trillion. Now, around this place, we throw around big numbers, but $6 trillion is a huge number. Can the gentleman put that in some kind of perspective?

The gentleman thinks that I ought to be taxed based on how I spend my money rather than whether I want to save it, invest it or spend it on different things.

I wonder if he would step back to podium, because I am not sure if my colleagues who have been listening in their offices really understand what we are talking about tonight. The gentleman is talking about getting rid of the income tax…

So the gentleman thinks that the Federal Government should not know at least as much as my spouse how much I give to charity. That is none of the government's business.

And the gentleman thinks that what I do for a living and how I make my money is none of the government's business.

Some people say, well, I do not want my mother-in-law buying her prescription drugs on line. You know what? Neither do we. What we want is parallel trading. What we want is our local pharmacists to be able to buy these drugs at 30 to 300…

I think veterinarians in some respects are like tourniquets: we do not need one often; but when we do need one, we need one rapidly; and in underserved areas, it could become a very serious problem. So I think this is an important piece of…

We have talked to the gentleman from Virginia (Chairman Goodlatte), and it is our understanding and intent that nothing in this language would preclude any veterinarian, no matter when they graduated from vet school, from applying or to…

The drug Lipitor, for example, every single tablet is imported into the United States, because it is only made in Ireland in an FDA-approved facility. When they ship into the United States, they do not bring it in in armored cars, they…

Let me tell my colleagues, the status quo is not fine. Let me give my colleagues some of the reasons: Kathi Beck, 24, Eugene, Oregon; Tami Bickett, 25, Powell Butte, Oregon; Scott Blecha, 27, Clatskanie, Oregon; Levi Brinkley, 22, Burns…

We have had a very lively discussion. This is an important debate. Ultimately, it is about hundreds of billions of dollars that Americans pay and will be forced to pay if we do not do something about it. There is nothing in it for any of…

Coming back to the abortion piece, if anybody knows what the rules are on the drug RU-486, it is the drug companies that make it. We talk about Canada and Mexico, we do not even mention Mexico in our legislation because we only talk about…

Billions. And that is when I began to move. As Winston Churchill once said, ``The difference between a fan and a fanatic is, a fanatic is one who cannot change their mind and will not change the subject.'' I have become a fanatic on this…

Absolutely. I know the gentleman wants to catch his plane, but I just want to say this. Regardless of what happens in the next week or two, we are not going to go away. This issue will not go away. We will stay here, on a bipartisan basis…

We are only talking about FDA drugs, and more importantly than that, you are correct. There are only, as I am told, about 600 facilities in the world that can produce FDA-approved drugs, and so that is the only drugs that we would permit…

We are only talking about FDA-approved drugs from FDA-approved facilities... We want to make certain that they are not treated like common criminals, because right now seniors are doing this. There was a study done by a University of Texas…

This is not a matter of right versus left. It is a matter of right versus wrong, and it is simply wrong to require that Americans pay the world's highest prices for prescription drugs, even though we are the world's best customers. In…

Let me just talk about a couple of things, and I think as we talk about this new benefit, and I think we all recognize there are far too many seniors that are not getting the prescription drugs that they need, there was a study done…

Unfortunately, on Taxol I do not have that comparison. I do not think it is on my list, but the comparison is essentially the same. It is about three times more, or at least it was when it came off patent in the United States; it was more…

We import in the United States thousands and thousands of tons of fruits and vegetables and meats. As a matter of fact, this year we will import 318,000 tons of plantains. If we can safely import 318,000 tons of plantains, we can surely…

We are absorbing that cost, and I think when we talked about this at a conference today, what somebody said is we are subsidizing the rest of the world in health care and prescription drugs, and we are subsidizing, I think your term is…

We understand there is a cost for research. We understand we have to pay that $3.9 billion that one of the big pharmaceutical companies will spend this year on advertising and marketing. We understand that has to be paid. We are willing to…