Sherrod Brown: “it has been 400 days since a bipartisan majority in the House passed legislation giving Americans access to safe…”

“it has been 400 days since a bipartisan majority in the House passed legislation giving Americans access to safe, affordable medicine from Canada and other allied nations, 400 days. Since then, the Senate has passed legislation commending a sculptor, a painter, its own staff, the nation of Bulgaria, and Smokey the Bear. The Senate has recognized the importance of motorsports. The Senate, as has the House, has spent many days renaming post offices and Federal buildings from sea to shining sea. There was time for all of those things, but for an issue as important to the American people as relief from the exploding price of prescription drugs, the other body simply could not find the time. This importation issue is just one example of the three Ds of the Bush administration's health policy playbook: denial, disinformation, and dodging responsibility. Here is one example: the Bush administration suppressed the new true cost of the Medicare law. The bill was originally tagged at $400 billion. The President told us that. The President said he would not sign it if it cost more than that. The government's own Medicare actuary and the President surely knew, the President's staff knew, that the bill actually cost $530 billion. So what did they do? They suppressed it. In a nutshell, the President's gag order worked, the bill passed, and the President signed it. And do my colleagues know what we got?…”