Prescription Drug Prices

Floor Speech

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Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, almost no one in Washington is talking about jobs. For 2 months now, both Chambers of the Congress have been locked down in talking about the debt ceiling.

Meanwhile, if you look back at the Bush years, America lost over 8 million jobs while the largest recession since the Great Depression, was precipitated by the Bush Wall Street bailout. America has only gotten back about 2 million jobs. Yes, only 2 million; still jobs are being created at about 120,000 per month. That is far from where we need to head to achieve economic recovery for all.

But rather than this Congress engaging in intelligent dialogue on how to create jobs, we keep going down these side roads to nowhere. Meanwhile, unemployment just went up another 10,000 jobs. 10,000 more workers filed for unemployment.

Every Member in both Chambers will be judged on not doing the work that the people want us to do. Instead Congress must focus on how to use the power of the Federal Government to create jobs.

If you take a look at what the Republican majority in the House wants to do, they want to cut unemployment benefits. That's not even understandable to any rational person.

They want to cut food. I invite any one of them, come to my district. Come and stand in the food lines. See how it feels. Better yet, help us pack some of the food bags, and then distribute them and give them to veterans who are coming home from the wars who don't have jobs. And then ask yourself what are you really doing here. What are you doing here? America needs jobs.

What about health benefits for people who've fallen out of work, and don't have any more health benefits for their family? Why should we cut there?

You know, there are some who like to proudly proclaim they're pro-life. Pro-life doesn't only involve the period before a child is born. It involves the entire life of a person, of a human being until natural death.

I think there are some philosophical questions our Members ought to be asking themselves about helping the American people at this critical point in our history.

Now, all of us want to produce balanced budgets. When you have full employment, you get balanced budgets and you even can get extra funds. Full employment means you can pay down your long-term debt. But you don't hear anything up here being talked about jobs. If it were happening, we'd have more job creation. But we have less job creation. More people are going on unemployment benefits. So the current conversation and discussions are totally off base.

Let's just look at one sector where America and the Federal Government could save a lot of money. America, as a country, spends over $250 billion a year on prescription drugs. And nearly a third of that amount is paid for by the Federal Government, which actually means our people paying their fair share of taxes, when they work, to the Federal Government and then the Federal Government meeting its obligations to our citizenry for their security and our Nation's future. Now, some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are saying, cut Social Security, cut Medicare. Hurt the American people. Hurt the people who have worked for a living. They don't talk about trimming the excess profits of the pharmaceutical companies. So, let's look at that pharmaceutical industry.

You know what? They're not paying their fair share into the Federal till.

Let's just look at one bag of heparin in a hospital for which Medicare ends up paying over $600, and in total, millions and millions of dollars a year for a product, a blood thinner that's been off patent for years. It's made in China. The ingredients are made in China. They're not even made here. Do you realize how much money a couple of companies are making off of selling just that one product? My Republican friends aren't trying to get fair prices for the American people.

Celebrex, for treating arthritis, Medicare pays for an average patient $148 a month. For Lipitor, for those trying to lower cholesterol, $122 a month.

Now if you take a look at the profits of Pfizer, Pfizer made $8.3 billion in profits, and its CEO made $25 million last year, just in what he's willing to admit. Johnson and Johnson made $13.3 billion in profits, while their CEO walked away with $29 million. Other big drugmakers like Abbott Labs, $4.6 billion. These are with Bs--billions. These aren't with Ms--millions. These aren't millions; these are billions. And Eli Lilly, $5 billion in profits our Federal Government is just forking over billions all the time. Yes, the Federal Government is the pharmaceutical industry's biggest customer, and the industry surely knows it.

Why doesn't the Federal Government use its purchasing power to get better bids on these drugs and have competitive bidding in order to purchase more fairly-priced pharmaceuticals? We did that back in the 1990s. We haven't done it since.

There's plenty of ways to get the funds to try to balance the budget. But the most important way to balance the budget is to help Americans get back to work. Then Congress must not forget the places in our budget where the American people are being gouged because some very powerful companies aren't doing their fair share to help our Nation recover. Proper management of the Federal pursestrings in long overdue.

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