Louise Slaughter: “Mr. Speaker, first it is important to acknowledge what everybody knows. We are not here on the House floor today because…”

“Mr. Speaker, first it is important to acknowledge what everybody knows. We are not here on the House floor today because the Republican leadership has seen the light on the high cost of prescription drugs, and we are not here discussing drug reimportation because the Republican leadership suddenly thinks it is a good idea. We are here because during the vote on Medicare a few Members of the majority stood up and stood their ground and demanded a vote on it. Now, it has been widely reported, Mr. Speaker, that during the discussions that led to today's debate, the Republican leadership promised that they would not lobby against the reimportation bill. That lasted about 5 minutes. They have even bragged about their reference in the press. As the majority leader said the other day, 'We are trying as hard as we can to defeat it.' Now, apparently, the Republican leadership, and the majority leader in particular, has gotten bored with breaking the promises they made to seniors and to students and to middle-income workers and to Democrats and Independents, and now they are breaking their promises to their own Members. I hope that they fail in their attempts to defeat this bill, because our seniors, gouged by the high cost of prescription drugs, are looking for affordable alternatives.”