Service Members Home Ownership Tax Act Of 2009

Floor Speech

SERVICE MEMBERS HOME OWNERSHIP TAX ACT OF 2009 -- (Senate - December 10, 2009)

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Mr. BROWN. Thank you, Mr. President.

I echo the comments of the senior Senator from Iowa. He is exactly right about the Dorgan amendment. There are a lot of reasons, as he pointed out, why the Dorgan amendment makes sense for the American people.

It makes sense for taxpayers because we pay way too much for prescription drugs as taxpayers. It makes sense for government programs--whether it is TRICARE, whether it is Medicare, whether it is Medicaid, whether it is the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program. It makes sense for small businesses and large businesses alike who are paying too much for prescription drugs. And it makes sense for seniors and all Americans who are paying too high a price for prescription drugs out of their pockets. It also makes sense in terms of, sort of, internationally as to what we do on the buying and selling of prescription drugs.

I was part of these discussions in the House where we had the same amendment. We would pass it, and then it would die in the Senate, or things would happen in the conference committees or whatever, where the drug companies really did exert their influence over the Congress and with the President during the Bush years.

But one of the arguments they always make is to question the safety of these drugs, that these drugs coming from Canada or these drugs coming from France are not safe, as if they did not have a food and drug administration as efficient and effective as ours in terms of protecting the public.

But what sort of shoots a hole in that argument is how many American drug companies--over and over and over, and in increasing numbers--how many American drug companies are importing ingredients especially from China.

Senator Kennedy, 1 1/2 years or so ago, asked me to chair an oversight hearing with the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee on this issue of what is happening when these American drug companies are increasing their outsourcing of jobs, particularly to China. It was in response to what happened in Toledo, OH, among other places, where a number of Americans died because of contaminated heparin.

Heparin is a blood thinner drug that is a very important drug to keep people healthier and live longer and live better. But some of the ingredients for heparin were made in China, and the drug company is not able to trace back, if you will, the supply chain, where they are getting their ingredients. They know they get them from China. The American drug companies--whether it is Pfizer or another drug company--when they outsource their production to China, may know where the plant is that puts all these ingredients together, but they cannot trace back--or at least they will not tell us or cannot tell us--all their ingredients. So they may get this ingredient from Wuhan, and this ingredient from Shanghai, and that ingredient from a rural outpost in Hebei or Henan Province, but they cannot tell us exactly where they come from. So no wonder these drugs are not as safe as they should be.

So if they were interested in drug safety, it would not be that they would stop us from drug importation because we know if we buy it from France or Canada or Germany, they have a food and drug agency, an FDA equivalent,
that keeps their drugs safe. They know that. It is all about protecting their profits. There is simply no doubt about that. Their profits get to be bigger because they make some of these drugs in China.

So let's not have it both ways. Let's not say we cannot import drugs safely into this country--when they are exporting jobs, as so many other industries are doing, to China, exporting jobs to little villages where they manufacture these ingredients. They end up in America's medicine cabinets. Let's not talk out of both sides of our mouths, as the drug industry is doing.

A couple other comments about the underlying bill and how important it is we move on this legislation. There are more than 400 people every day--in Defiance, OH, in Gallipolis and Zanesville and Saint Clairsville and Cadiz and all over my State--400 people every single day who lose their insurance.

Every day my friends on the other side of the aisle delay, every day they offer amendments and then will not let us vote on them, and stand up and object to even voting on things, every day they try to filibuster, every day they put up another hurdle, 400 more people in my State lose their insurance. It is about 1,000 people in this country every week--1,000 people in this country every week--who die because they do not have health insurance. It is 45,000 people a year, so 900-some people every week in this country die because they do not have health insurance.

A woman with breast cancer without insurance is 40 percent more likely to die than a woman with breast cancer with insurance. I heard President Bush, in Ohio, maybe a couple years ago, say every American can get health care. They can go to an emergency room. Well, a woman suffering from breast cancer, who did not get a mammogram because she could not afford it, did not get the kinds of tests she should have because she did not have a doctor she could afford to pay, and because she did not have insurance--the emergency room does not do those kinds of things. Even if she got sick, the emergency room would not take care of her until she was almost dead. Then she could go into the emergency room and they will take care of her in her last few days or her last few weeks of life.

That is not the way we should do health care. This kind of delay, hearing these kinds of delaying actions, these kinds of delaying tactics, these kinds of ``we can't pass this,'' ``chicken little,'' ``the sky is following''--every day we have Republicans coming down here saying ``the sky is falling,'' and it simply is not.

I want this bill to be bipartisan. I am a member of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, as is my friend, Senator Roberts from Kansas, who is in the Chamber. During that markup in June and July, we passed 160 Republican amendments. Some of them were major, some of them were not so major. But this bill had a bipartisan flavor to it.

It is only on the big questions--the role of Medicare, the role of the public option--some of the bigger questions, where there are philosophical differences; the same reasons that back in the 1960s, when Medicare passed, it was passed almost only by Democrats because Republicans did not agree there should be a major role in government in our health care system.

So it is a philosophical difference. It is not so much partisan as that. So even though there are many good Republican ideas in this bill, on the big questions there is that difference.

So, Mr. President, I think it is so important--when I hear that many Ohioans, every day, lose their insurance, this many Americans, every week, die because they do not have insurance--to pass this legislation.

Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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