Peter Welch: “Thank you, Senator Wyden. Mr. President, when I talk to Vermonters, as I am sure when you talk to Tennesseeans…”

“Thank you, Senator Wyden. Mr. President, when I talk to Vermonters, as I am sure when you talk to Tennesseeans, everyday, hard-working people at the end of the month are struggling to pay their bills. It is expensive. And people are working really hard, but the cost of things is going up. Taxes are eating into their paychecks, and they don't understand how it is they can work so hard--many families, it is two people working--and they still can't pay their bills. There is a suspicion among a lot of folks I talk to that there is something wrong, and it is kind of a rigged situation. What we are talking about today proves that the suspicion that Vermonters have about things being rigged, they are right. The second point I want to make at the outset is this issue, this specific example, provides such clarity that some of the worst things that cause the most suffering and the most economic insecurity are totally legal--totally wrong, by the way, but legal. What did we find out with the Wyden report? We found that a major U.S. pharmaceutical company was able to make sales of $20 billion of its product in 2019 and report zero income--zero in profits here in this country. What that ultimately means is that what Pfizer paid for taxes-- despite this extraordinary profit, they paid less than the mailroom clerk pays in Social Security. They paid less than the pharmacist at the drugstore who dispenses the prescriptions.…”