Gilbert Gutknecht

A new drug war is starting. The first shots have been fired by the FDA. Those shots are being fired at American seniors. This is a dumb fight, dumbly fought. The Bush administration, which claims to support open markets, must decide…

Reclaiming my time, I will give all Members a medal and a kiss on the cheek. But the point is that this account has grown by more than double the inflation rate. All we are saying is let us take this account back to the 1996 levels…

If we are to do our job and effectively deal, we cannot sustain this kind of a chart. With 19 percent increases in the costs of prescription drugs and 3.5 percent increases in Social Security cost-of-living adjustments, that just cannot…

Again, these are not my numbers, I am not making these things up. The only thing we have done in terms of real raw research is we had these drugs brought in Europe, and we found out what they were in Northfield, Minnesota, for the same…

That is just people over 65. That is just seniors. That does not include you and me and our kids and grandkids and whomever, all the other people.

I think it was Glucophage that originally you had to take twice a day. There is a legitimate question whether or not they should have gotten an extra 17 years simply because they went from a two-a-day capsule to a once-a-day capsule.

If a drug is developed mostly with taxpayer-funded research money through the NIH or other Federal grants, the taxpayers should get some kind of royalty and that is a question that we have not resolved. Frankly, we may need some help from…

I know some of the most important drugs for diabetes have literally been off patent for several years, or had their patents renewed. A number of these drugs were developed 50 years ago and are still being sold at relatively high prices…

That is my understanding, that almost any minute change, including changing the color of the tablet, if they say we are going to change the color of the tablet because it will increase the effectiveness of the drug or its shelf life, they…

I will give an even better example. Go down to the Mint here in the United States capital, just a few blocks down here. They print $1 bills. What I am saying is the difference between one sheet of $1 bills will be no different than the…

I mentioned this earlier. The Food and Drug Administration does keep pretty good records, and we know that thousands of people have become ill and died as a result of eating imported foods that were contaminated with some kinds of…

Zero. Not one. And let me say that we pay a very dear price for what apparently is no real protection.

In the era of the Internet, NAFTA and world trade, the FDA should not be allowed to stand between American consumers and lower drug prices.

I think we have to attack this problem on many fronts. The more we learn about it, the more we realize there are an awful lot of problems. One of them is all of the money that the pharmaceutical companies are spending on marketing. I…

Coming back to the cost of research, I think we in the United States ought to be willing to pay our fair share for research. When we look at these charts, clearly we should not be required to subsidize the starving Swiss.

I think if we are paying for most of the research, and something else most Americans do not know, and that is 44 percent of all of the money spent on basic research in the world is spent by Americans and American companies.

I appreciate the frustration, particularly of the gentleman from Vermont (Mr. Sanders) on issues that are important to him. What I am concerned about, it has been mentioned already, is the law of unintended consequences. This is a place…

I would like to calm things down for a minute. This Capitol is filled with great quotations on the walls, but in this great Chamber, this is only one quotation. It is right up here, and I would like to read it. It says, ``Let us develop…

No, it just simply says you cannot use the money to pursue law-abiding citizens who have a legal prescription.

That is a correct statement based on all of the evidence and research that I have received from independent agencies. That is correct. In fact, we even have an independent study of Canada, where they do have price controls, but they are…

I do not support price controls. I think the best way to break the backs of price controls is to have open markets, because once the pharmaceutical industry and European countries realize that American consumers are going to be buying from…

What most of our farmers want is not a bigger check from the Federal government. What they want is an opportunity and more markets so they can earn a decent living from the market itself. By opening up new markets like the ethanol market…

It is a happy coincidence where good policy comes together, when we are talking about energy policy, we are talking about environmental policy, and ultimately also talking about what is good for American agriculture. All three of those…

I was one who sort of came of age politically under Ronald Reagan, and he was and always will be to me a tremendous teacher of true principles, and he seemed to have a tremendous understanding of the American people. We certainly wish our…

If I could just say that the two of us came in 1994 and hopefully, with the blessing of our voters in our district, we are going to be back next year to continue to fight in that Teddy Roosevelt tradition, to create more competition…