Tsunami Warning, Education, and Research Act of 2015

Floor Speech

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Mr. DOGGETT. Madam Speaker, while certainly saluting the many Members who have worked so diligently on this measure, I cannot vote for it.

In a wide and endless desert of support for research funding, even getting a few drops of rain is understandably welcomed by the thirsty.

Under Republican rule, we have seen a dreadful drought in research funding. This is a bill that attempts to address that shortfall. I voted for the bill when it was on the floor of the House at a previous time. At that point, it promised the hope, after this long drought of almost $10 billion in assured, certain funding, for research so that we might find cures for some of these diseases before we get them ourselves--the concern of so many people.

Now, under this new measure, we have only about a fourth of the funding previously approved in the House, and it is no longer certain money; it is maybe money for the future. So there may be bipartisan agreement, but there is not a bipartisan advancement.

At the same time that research dollars are dramatically cut--the very research dollars that were the reason for having this bill in the first place--Big Pharma got some of its wish list approved. And how very appropriate that this measure and so many other moving parts have been packed into what it calls the Tsunami Warning bill.

If there is one thing we can be sure of this past year, it is that those people who rely on lifesaving drugs and who want to be able to have a prescription that the doctor prescribes have been hit by a real tsunami. They have been buried in one wave after another wave after another giant wave of pharmaceutical price gouging.

Whether it is the EpiPen for a child who is might have an allergic reaction, whether it is insulin for someone who is diabetic and relies on that insulin, whether it is an oncology drug that costs over $100,000, it is wave after wave of a tsunami of price gouging.

And what has this Congress done about that?
Absolutely nothing. I must say, the administration has done very little more. They have looked at it. There have been a few speeches about it, but there has not been effective action.

So what we get in this bill are a few things that Big Pharma wants that have been on its wish list for a long time, and consumers, they get nothing to look forward to other than more of those big waves of huge price increases.

I am also concerned that the policy arm that publishes Consumer Reports magazine has expressed deep concerns about additional patient risk as a result of some of the provisions that the pharmaceutical companies and the medical device manufacturers have insisted as the price for getting a little additional research funding.

So I am voting ``no,'' not because this provides some research dollars. It ought to be providing the level of certain research funding we approved already, but because it fails to address this critical health need.

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