American Relief Act, 2025

Floor Speech

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Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I heard my colleague on the Republican side talk about the reduction in the number of pages in the bill. What I want to point out is by reducing the number of pages, which is not the issue, they reduced the help for the American people that is in this bill. That is what the Republicans have done.

At the beginning of the week, we had a bipartisan bill that provided critical relief for the American people. From my perspective on the Committee on Energy and Commerce, what we have done over the last year was hear from our constituents. We had hearings to hear about what was necessary to lower costs, to provide relief for people that, as you know, feel very strongly that prices are too high, that there are all kinds of problems with corporate interests and websites that are not protecting their interests, not protecting their privacy, and soliciting all kinds of things with misinformation. We are the committee that deals primarily with healthcare, with consumer protection, with environmental concern.

What we did is worked on a bipartisan basis to put together in this legislation proposals that would really make a difference from what we heard from our constituents around the country.

Now, that is what has been taken out of this bill, and it has been taken out because one man, a billionaire, decided to tell my Republican colleagues that he did not want this bill. I am not going to try to figure out why he doesn't want it, but obviously, you know, the types of things that I am talking about are not the things that he would want in the bill.

What are we talking about here? What was taken out of this bill?

Well, first, my colleague, the ranking member of the Appropriations Committee, mentioned pediatric cancer and rare disease therapies, research for cancer for kids that are facing cancer problems; community health centers; teaching health centers to provide for more primary care doctors were extended for 2 years and then for 5 years with more funding for that purpose; and prescription drug reforms.

One of the biggest problems that we face right now. Is called PBMs, pharmaceutical benefit managers. Theoretically what they are supposed to do is work between the insurer or the individual and the drug companies to reduce prices, but because there is no transparency, what they actually do is pocket the money that they have negotiated, the savings that they have negotiated for themselves, rather than give it back to the consumer.

What we did on the Energy and Commerce Committee is we said, no, we want reform of PBMs. That basically is sort of a way of saying that if they negotiate savings, that has to go back to the consumer to lower costs, to lower the costs for prescription drugs, which is one of the biggest things that people are concerned about now, it is one of the biggest costs they have in healthcare.

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Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, these are the types of things that have been taken out of this bill: healthcare protections, consumer protections, environmental protections, safety protections. These are the types of things that have been taken out of this bill because some billionaire, the richest man on Earth, decided that he didn't want those things.

This has now become a bill that has taken out anything that is essentially important for consumer or health protection or for relief to lower costs for the American people.

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