Joe Barton: “Mr. Speaker, if you went out to the American people and asked them, what does FDA stand for, I doubt very seriously that…”

“Mr. Speaker, if you went out to the American people and asked them, what does FDA stand for, I doubt very seriously that very many people could say that it stand for Food and Drug Administration. I joked earlier in the year in a television interview that it stands for ``foot dragging and alibis,'' because it takes about 12 years and $350 million to get a drug and medical device through the entire gauntlet of approval steps at the FDA that are currently in place. The people that are participating in this special order this evening, colleagues that have cosponsored the bills in a bipartisan effort, we want FDA to stand for fair decisions for all. We have the best medical devices in the world; we have the best pharmacological drugs in the world; we have the safest food supply in the world. But more and more, our medical device companies, our pharmaceutical, innovative, companies are going overseas because the approvals do not take as long and the regulatory jungle is not as complex as it is here in this country.”