On the recordFebruary 23, 2010
This is a year when there's a lot of demand for bipartisanship. And bipartisanship is a wonderful thing. We already have bipartisan support for this bill. Now, bipartisanship can't be defined by those who want to hold Congress hostage and prevent us from getting anything done. We already have the unanimous support of the Attorneys General in 2007 as you mentioned, not a single dissenting voice in saying this needed to be repealed. This is not a Federal takeover. The Attorney Generals both want the resources to fight this, and they want the expanded jurisdiction. We have 95 percent of our health care markets highly concentrated. President Bush called a bipartisan blue ribbon commission together to look at the issue of antitrust exemptions, and they came back and said there is no justification for these antitrust exemptions to exist. Any arguments that are being made are anachronistic, or are simply ones that only make sense inside the Washington Beltway. This is something where we need Main Street values, not Washington collusion, to go and challenge these monopolies and get competition back in the market. I yield back.
