Orrin Hatch: “I admire my colleague from Arkansas. We have been friends for years. He feels very deeply about this. But there are many…”

“I admire my colleague from Arkansas. We have been friends for years. He feels very deeply about this. But there are many of us who feel very deeply about our side of the issue. When the time comes, I will ask my colleagues to vote against the Pryor amendment and to vote for the compromise legislation on the GATT/ Pharmaceutical patent issue that was recently adopted by a bipartisan vote of the Senate Judiciary Committee. I know many here are asking themselves how many times are we going to have to debate this issue? And, for that matter, they are asking why we are considering it on an underlying bill that is, at best, only tangentially related to the subject matter of our amendment. We considered the Pryor amendment in the Finance Committee last fall as part of the budget reconciliation bill, and the committee rejected it. We considered the amendment on December 7 as an amendment to the partial-birth abortion ban bill, and the amendment was not adopted.”