Political Quotes

“I thank the gentleman from Minnesota. I can't think of anybody in the Congress who has done more for medical innovation, his leadership on the medical device tax, on FDA reform issues, than Mr. Paulsen. It's an honor for me to be here tonight to discuss this issue before the House. What we have done in a very strong and forceful bipartisan way, which is critically important and something we don't do nearly enough of in this Chamber, is to send a message that we want to protect the medical device industry in America. The innovations that are created in this country are second to none. The way that we handle the FDA process could be improved, and we are going to talk about that shortly. But with regard to medical device issues in particular, I'm fortunate that the district I represent is home to a number of large and small medical device manufacturers that are doing great work right here in America, producing medical devices that we rely on in this country, that millions of Americans depend on. And when we last year, in the last session of Congress, went through the debate and eventually passage of the health care reform bill--which I voted against--one of the issues that was in there was the medical device tax, which seemed pretty arbitrary. They were looking for sources of funding. They were looking for ways to make the bill come into balance. And one of the industries that they targeted for the tax was the medical device industry.…”