Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I will also include for the Record, information about campaign contributions and lobbying expenses. Last week, and I hope to get into this a little bit, the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio) and I talked about the issue of pharmaceutical drugs, about the crisis that exists all over the United States where we have elderly people and people with chronic illnesses who cannot afford the high cost of prescription drugs. We talked about the fact that the same exact drug manufactured in the United States of America is sold for significantly lower prices in Canada, in Mexico, and in Europe, and that the American consumer is being ripped off. We talked about the huge profits of the pharmaceutical industry and the fact that the United States is perhaps the only major Nation on earth that does not regulate the price that pharmaceutical companies can sell their product. Lo and behold, apropos of what the gentleman from Oregon was talking about, now let us just see how money works and the relationship to the very high cost of prescription drugs in this country and to lobbying expenses and campaign contributions. It turns out that, for the first 18 months of the last election cycle, the pharmaceutical industry had lobbying expenses of over $74 million and made more than $7 million in campaign contributions, which put them at the very top of any industry in America.”