Commerce, Justice, Science, Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, Interior, Environment, Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, Transportation, and Housing and Urban Development Appropriations Act, 2020
Floor Speech
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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, this isn't part of the remarks I had planned for, but let me just surprise the Senator from Ohio and say I agree with him. We need to pass a transportation bill.
He mentioned some of the union workers he was talking to this morning, and they want Congress to function as it should, which means we should pass our appropriations bills, the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development bill that the Senator from Maine is the bill manager on. We ought to do all of our appropriations bills, including keeping our commitment to our men and women in the military by passing the Defense appropriations bill.
Unfortunately, we know that politics has overwhelmed our ability to function here in Congress, and the Democrats, for some reason, decided to filibuster the Defense appropriations bill just recently.
What I worry about is this obsession with politics and dividing the Nation 12 months before the next general election, when everybody who is a registered voter will have a chance to vote on the next President of the United States. We are going to let that dominate our discussions to the failure of our ability to actually pass appropriations bills, fund the military, and fund a highway bill, which would provide much needed infrastructure development all across our country, including the fast-growing States like those the Presiding Officer and I happen to come from.
So I hope that the growing sense I have that we are simply going to quit functioning a year out before the election, because of the obsession over politics and impeachment mania, does not prove to be true. But the storm clouds are on the horizon, and I am becoming increasingly convinced that, unfortunately, that is the only thing Speaker Pelosi and the House Democrats care about, and our ability to actually get our work done is going to be tragically squandered. Death of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi
Mr. President, let me talk about some good news. Of course, this weekend, the world celebrated as the hunt for the leader of ISIS--the latest terrorist organization that has dominated the news--finally came to an end, and President Trump announced the successful raid by U.S. troops that led to the death of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the world's No. 1 terrorist. This, of course, is reminiscent of that effort under the Obama administration to take out Osama Bin Laden years after he led the effort to kill 3,000 Americans on 9/11 in New York and here in Washington at the Pentagon.
With the elimination of the ISIS caliphate earlier this year, it was only a matter of time before al-Baghdadi would run out of places to hide. I want to say how much I admire and appreciate the courage and the dedication of the men and women who contributed to this raid and who actually made it happen. This is an amazing combination of talent, training, intelligence, and cooperation with our partners in the Middle East that led to this incredible and successful effort. I am grateful to our military leaders, our intelligence professionals, our servicemembers, and our allies who have been tirelessly working for this goal for years.
I applaud President Trump for making the difficult decision to put American troops in harm's way. Fortunately, it did not result in any loss of life or injuries, I am told, for the troops who actually executed the raid, but let's give credit where credit is due. Just as President Obama deserved credit for making the difficult decision to take out Obama Bin Laden, President Trump should be entitled to credit for making the difficult but important and correct decision to take out ISIS's leader.
Because of the decisive action and flawless execution of troops on the ground, it was a great day for freedom-loving people and for all Americans that the world's No. 1 most wanted man was brought to justice.
Coincidentally, yesterday, I was in Austin speaking to the Mortgage Bankers Association, and Admiral McRaven came on right after me. It was an amazing coincidence and a real treat for the mortgage bankers who, after I got through talking to them, got to hear from the man who led the raid that brought down Osama bin Laden in 2011. It was a remarkable moment to reflect on our Nation's ongoing fight to eradicate terrorism and the great leaders and the great professionals who have contributed to our efforts to keep America safe.
It is important that we all remember that the fight is not yet won and that it actually may never be finally concluded. We must remain committed to working with our allies in the region and around the world to continue to eliminate terrorism wherever we can and prevent its resurgence.
As I indicated earlier, later this week, the Senate will begin voting on spending bills to fund the Department of Defense so that they can continue this fight, and it would be ironic, indeed, if our Democratic colleagues thwarted our efforts to fund the Department of Defense once again in the wake of this incredible accomplishment by those professionals.
Last month, Democrats blocked us from even considering the defense spending bill. They decided their seemingly never-ending disputes with President Trump transcend national security.
I hope this weekend's announcement has brought this decision into some perspective. We need to quickly pass the defense spending bill to ensure that our military will not be impacted by these political games. Healthcare
Mr. President, on another matter, I continue to hear from my constituents back home about the number of Texans who are struggling to cover the cost of their prescription medication. We know that deductibles, particularly under the Affordable Care Act, have gotten to be very high.
As a matter of fact, it is not uncommon to hear people say that they have a deductible of $5,000 or more. The copays they have to pay for prescription drugs, strangely enough, in their deductible--the $5,000 you would have to pay under your Affordable Care Act policy--they get none of the benefit of the negotiated discount or rebates that the drug companies get with prescription pharmacy benefit managers. That does not flow to the consumer. Actually, consumers are being treated much worse than the insurance companies and the pharmaceutical companies are and deriving virtually no benefit.
I have heard stories. We had one particularly profound story about a woman whose son is diabetic. He became an adult, and she described how purchasing his insulin affected many of his decisions, such as moving out of the house, getting a job, whether or not to marry, basically because he had to manage the high cost of the copay for the insulin that was necessary to preserve his life.
Unfortunately, as in many cases, people end up self-rationing their drugs to make them last longer, and that is at a great health risk to them, to skip doses or to take less or to otherwise not follow their doctor's orders.
People are frustrated and confused. They are increasingly worried about how they and their loved ones are going to continue to cover these rising costs, and they want to know what Congress intends to do about it. I frequently tell the folks back home that the most frustrating moments in Washington, DC, are when the White House and Congress agree and when Republicans and Democrats agree that something is a problem and needs to be done, but nothing gets done. That is a hard one to explain. Everybody says yes, we need to deal with high prescription drug costs, but we don't seem to be capable of getting things done.
I am always happy to share updates about the progress we make within our committees, such as the Finance and Judiciary Committees I serve on. Unfortunately, when it comes to getting a bill across the floor of the U.S. Senate, it has proved to be an insurmountable challenge.
We have spent a lot of time hearing from patients, healthcare providers, drugmakers, and other experts about prescription drug costs, and it is admittedly a very complex topic, but I think a lot of the folks involved in the business sort of enjoy that black box they operate in and they are afraid of the transparency that would actually reveal who is getting the money and why it is that the savings don't flow to consumers.
We have been looking at every stop a drug takes in route, from research and development to the shelf of your medicine cabinet. We have seen some things that are pretty alarming. There are pharmaceutical CEOs earning big bonuses, of course, as sales go up. I am not opposed to CEOs getting paid well for new lifesaving and innovative drugs, but I am if they do it at the expense of consumers. We have seen pharmacy benefit managers who negotiate backdoor rebates and drive up out-of- pocket costs. Of course, there are also pharmaceutical companies that game the patent system to stave off competition as long as possible.
In one of our Finance Committee hearings, I was able to ask the CEO of AbbVie about their product HUMIRA, which is the most commonly prescribed drug in America today, I believe. It is the poster child for the kind of gamesmanship that I think ought to infuriate all of us.
HUMIRA is a wonderful drug. It is used to treat arthritis and a number of other conditions, and it has been available for about 15 years. One might think that would be sufficient time to cover the patent period and that a more generic or biosimilar alternative might be available, which would be cheaper, much to the benefit of consumers. You would be wrong.
AbbVie currently has 136 patents and 247 applications on HUMIRA. In fact, the maze of patents on HUMIRA is so complex that there is no biosimilar available in America. This jumbled network of patents makes it nearly impossible for a competitor to come into the market. To date, there are five competitors to HUMIRA in Europe--five--but not in America, not to the benefit of American consumers. All of these five competitors that sell a biosimilar alternative to HUMIRA in Europe are blocked from selling it in the United States until 2023. That is not an accident.
Again, I don't begrudge companies that discover lifesaving and innovative drugs getting the coverage of a patent for the appropriate period of time because that is where they recoup their research and development costs, and unfortunately not all of these drug discoveries turn out with a good story. But this strikes me as gamesmanship and an abuse of the system. Patents were intended to guard intellectual property and encourage researchers to pour time and resources into developing these new drugs. These drugmakers aren't just using the patent system to protect their intellectual property; they are abusing it, to the detriment of consumers, to increase their bottom line.
Earlier this year, I introduced a bill with our colleague from Connecticut, Senator Blumenthal, to take aim at this practice. The Affordable Prescriptions for Patients Act disarms the so-called patent thickets to enable competitors to come to market sooner. This bill streamlines the litigation process by limiting the number of patents these companies can use so companies can spend less time in the courtroom. Competitors would be able to resolve patent issues faster and bring their drugs to market sooner. Better competition, I am convinced, means better prices for patients.
Our country is a leader in pharmaceutical innovation, partly because we offer robust protection for intellectual property. And that is a good thing, but we have to do more to stop the bad actors taking advantage of those innovation protections in order to maintain their monopoly at the expense of the American people. That is exactly what the legislation I have introduced with Senator Blumenthal would do. By the way, it passed unanimously out of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
The Affordable Prescriptions for Patients Act doesn't stifle innovation, it doesn't limit patent rights, and it doesn't cost taxpayers a dime. In fact, just the opposite is true. The Congressional Budget Office released a cost estimate for this bill and found that it would lower spending by more than half a billion dollars over 10 years. And that is just savings to the Federal Government for Medicare and Medicaid; there undoubtedly would be additional savings for consumers in their private health insurance.
Despite the fact that this legislation received the unanimous support of the Judiciary Committee in June, it has yet to make it to the Senate floor for a vote. As it turns out, I am informed that the minority leader, the Senator from New York, Mr. Schumer, is leading the charge in blocking the Senate's ability to consider that bill.
Our colleague the minority leader loves to say that the Senate is a legislative graveyard because we haven't voted on a number of ultrapartisan bills passed by the House, but when it comes to passing the bills that actually have bipartisan support--bills that could actually pass both Chambers and become law--it looks as though the minority leader has become the gravedigger-in-chief. Why he would refuse to allow a vote on a bill cosponsored by one of his own Members that would lower drug costs for patients across the country and save more than half a billion dollars over 10 years for taxpayers is beyond me. It seems like a no-brainer. Again, I am afraid that politics may have once again interfered with our Democratic colleague's interest in making sound public policy.
While our Democratic colleagues continue their crusade to remove the President from office, the American people's lives aren't getting any easier. Their lives aren't on hold such that they could just simply wait out the politics that seems to crowd out good public policy in Washington, DC. We know for sure that their prescription medications aren't getting any cheaper. So I would urge our colleague, the Senate minority leader, to quit blocking the bipartisan bill I have discussed today so that our constituents--all of our constituents--in Texas, New York, Maine, and all over the country can begin to enjoy some relief from their mounting out-of-pocket drug costs.
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