Byron Dorgan: “I want to go through with the chairman of the Budget Committee, the issue of the increase in public debt over a 10-year…”

“I want to go through with the chairman of the Budget Committee, the issue of the increase in public debt over a 10-year period, which seems to me incompatible with this notion that we have such large surpluses that we can provide a 10-year tax cut costing trillions of dollars. If that is the case, why is the public debt increasing in this very budget resolution? I will do that at a later time, but I am here now to talk about the issue of prescription drugs. We know there are a large number of citizens, especially senior citizens, in this country who cannot afford the prescription medicines they must take, the prescription medicines prescribed by their doctors necessary to continue a healthy lifestyle. All of us have an opportunity day to day and week to week, as we are in our respective States, to talk to older Americans who are taking increasing amounts of prescription drugs and paying more for them. Senior citizens represent 12 percent of our country's population. Yet they consume one-third of this country's prescription drugs.”