Senate Proceeding on Sep 29th, 2009 :: 0:44:10 to 0:59:35
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0:44:08 to 0:44:29( Edit History Discussion )

Byron Dorgan: quorum call: mr. dorgan: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from north dakota. mr. dorgan: madam president, i ask unanimous consent the quorum call be vacated. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. dorgan: madam president, i ask to speak in morning business for as much time the presiding officer: without objection. mr. dorgan: madam president, today a news story had a title, "leading dem plans to blow up deal with big pharma."

0:44:10 to 0:59:35( Edit History Discussion )
Speech By: Byron Dorgan

0:44:30 to 0:44:52( Edit History Discussion )

Byron Dorgan: hoping to blow up the reached between the white house, drug makers and senate finance committee chairman max baucus by introducing an amendment to the floor to allow prescriptio drugso be reimported from canada," et cetera. and there's a picture of me. and i woke up this morning not thinking i was going to try blow up anything, and i wanted to respond to this the

0:44:53 to 0:45:14( Edit History Discussion )

Byron Dorgan: in this chamber, bipartisan group of 30 ranging from myself and senatornowe as the sponsor, senator stabenow, senator mccain, so many others who want to deal with this issue of f drugs, are we trying to blow something up? the answer's no. we've been trying for a long,

0:45:15 to 0:45:36( Edit History Discussion )

Byron Dorgan: long in this chamber to say that we ought to have fair pres the american people, and presently it's not madam president, this is a pill bottle that would contain lipitor. that's made by pfizer. it is made in ireland and sent around the world. these two bottles are identical. one is red, one is blue.

0:45:37 to 0:45:57( Edit History Discussion )

Byron Dorgan: but they had the same pill made by the same company, put in the same bottle, this one shipped to canada, this one shipped to the united states, and this was $1.83 per tablet. that's what the canadian consumers paid. and our consumers got to pay $4.48 per tablet. same pill, same company, same bottle, different price.

0:45:58 to 0:46:18( Edit History Discussion )

Byron Dorgan: american consumers, you get to pay the $4.48 per pill. $1.83. and it's not just lipitor. that's the most popular cholesterol-lowering drug. widely taken. it is it is consumers -- this happens to be canada, but i cou here france, germany, spain,

0:46:19 to 0:46:41( Edit History Discussion )

Byron Dorgan: italy, and so on. it is that we are charged the highest prices in the world for brand-name drugs. plavix 73% higher than canada. boniva, 91% higher than canada. zocor, 103% higher than canada.

0:46:42 to 0:47:03( Edit History Discussion )

Byron Dorgan: and the list goes on. 157% higher than they pay in canada, 194%. it is just not fair. one day i sat on a hay bale at a little farm reception with a guy in his 80's. we sat there just tawsmg he said. my wife has been fighting breast cancer for three years. he said, for three years we've

0:47:04 to 0:47:24( Edit History Discussion )

Byron Dorgan: driven to canada max fen where she could -- to buy at that fobuy i'm saying it's not fair. a group of us have been trying for aon legislation that allows consumer freedom, the freedom to

0:47:25 to 0:47:45( Edit History Discussion )

Byron Dorgan: say if this ident being sold in winnipeg, canada, why country access that drug? why don't they have to access that drug? waf a put out in legislation a piece of legislation -- we've put out in legislation a piece of regulation that establishes much greater security for the safety of our drug snrie with

0:47:46 to 0:48:06( Edit History Discussion )

Byron Dorgan: batch lots and pedigrees and everything that attaches to the security side and then we say that the american people can access the f.d.a. hfd approved drugs in the countries that have the same chain of custody that we have and have the same kind of safety that we have. give the american people the freedom. when they have that freedom to access those identical drugs at a lower price sold at a fraction of the price in other

0:48:07 to 0:48:28( Edit History Discussion )

Byron Dorgan: the world, then pharmaceutical industry will be required to re-price those drugs in this country and give the american people fair that's just a fact. now, i understand that the white house negotiated with the pharmaceutical industry and came up with a plan by which the?? pharmaceutical industry over 10 years would fill part of what is

0:48:29 to 0:48:49( Edit History Discussion )

Byron Dorgan: called the doughnut hole -- it is all shouldn't say "controversial." it is complicated in terms of people understanding the doughnut hole as a portion of the drug benefit in which the seniors have to pay their own costs, so i understand there was an agreement between the white house and the pharmaceutical industry to do that. but nobody here was a part of that agreement.

0:48:50 to 0:49:11( Edit History Discussion )

Byron Dorgan: and the 30 or so of us who have been very strongly working to address this issue feel that when the health reform bill comes to the floor of the senate, we would intend to offer this amendment. if you don't deal with the increasi cost of prescription drugs, when you try to put downward pressure on the ct of health care, in my you've failed.

0:49:12 to 0:49:32( Edit History Discussion )

Byron Dorgan: one of the fastest areas of cost increases has been prescription drugs. you're just going to leave that aside and say, don't pay any attention to that, doesn't matter? you can't do that. and so we're trying to find to put some downward pressure on healthare prices. and that must include, in my judgment, putting some downward pressure on prescription drugs. let me be quick to

0:49:33 to 0:49:54( Edit History Discussion )

Byron Dorgan: that the pharmaceutical industry does important things. i don't wish them ill at all. i've done things that support them, research and development, tax credits and so on. but i have not shall -- i am not interested in just waiting t hotoallow them to continue to their brand-name drugs much,

0:49:55 to 0:50:15( Edit History Discussion )

Byron Dorgan: mu it is not fair and when the health care reform bill comes to the floor of the senate, i and my stabenow, senator mccain ring many others, a bipartisan group -- will intend to offer this. it is not intended to blow up anything. we are not something up. all we're going to do is demand that some commonsense and some

0:50:16 to 0:50:38( Edit History Discussion )

Byron Dorgan: basic fairness be established in the pricing of prescription drugs in this country the way to do that is to give the american people the freedom to access this identical prescription drug in other areas where it is sold at a fraction of the price to their consumers. so, madam president, i, again,

0:50:39 to 0:51:00( Edit History Discussion )

Byron Dorgan: just wntsewanted to disabuse anybody of the notion that we're going to blow something up. not true. the pharmaceutical industry would not like what we're trying to do. they would like the capability to price our drugs, in the case of lipitor, $4.50 tablet when they tell it to than that -- i understand they'd like that opportunity. on behalf of the american citizen i say that's not fair.

0:51:01 to 0:51:21( Edit History Discussion )

Byron Dorgan: it is wrong and it ought change. and if we pass the regulation that we have introduced, a broad, bipartisan group here in the united states senate, it will give the american people the freedom and force, in my judgment, a re-pricing towards fair pcing of prescription drugs in our so again i wanted to make a point, we're not trying anything up.

0:51:22 to 0:51:42( Edit History Discussion )

Byron Dorgan: we are trying to fix something that's wrong. and we're going to try to do that when the health care reform bill comes to the floor of the senate. we have been guaranteed -- senator others -- we were intending to offer it earlier in the year. the majority do it here. i will make certain you have the

0:51:43 to 0:52:03( Edit History Discussion )

Byron Dorgan: opportunity on the floor of the senate. that's why whave be in the line towards t offer the amendment and have a debate. madam president, if i might just in a couple of minutes another subject say spoken often about an issue on the floor of the senate that goes back some decade or so on

0:52:04 to 0:52:25( Edit History Discussion )

Byron Dorgan: the issue of and i'm not going to revisit all of that that happened 10 years ago, but i do want to say this: i happe the first items of business this year should have been financial reform, but i no he that others disagreed. i know the president wanted to do health care first and some other items first. but i know that the president and his team are working very hard now on financial reform.

0:52:26 to 0:52:46( Edit History Discussion )

Byron Dorgan: it is very important to get this right. and i just want to make a point --, i've bln readin about -- i want to demonstrate what is happening as a result of a near-collapse of the last fall, a whole series of things steeredhis economy into

0:52:47 to 0:53:08( Edit History Discussion )

Byron Dorgan: the ditch last fall. the deepest recession since the great depression. so now we are here a year later and september 12, 2009, "the new york times" "a year later, little change on wall "one year after the collapse of lehman brothers, the surprise is not how much has changed in the financial industry, but how

0:53:09 to 0:53:30( Edit History Discussion )

Byron Dorgan: little." not much change on wall street. september 15, "the washington post," "the wall street cay knee know, back in business." think of that. a year aft unbelievable deep recession since the great

0:53:31 to 0:53:51( Edit History Discussion )

Byron Dorgan: year later, "the wall street casinoback in business." what are they talking about? credit default swaps, you name it all kinds of exotic products where they secure tied everything. everybody made a lot of money. on the way back from making their deposits one discovered that the economy had collapsed because a lost bad

0:53:52 to 0:54:12( Edit History Discussion )

Byron Dorgan: decisions had people who were gambling. "a year after lehman, wall street's acting like wall street again." not much "wall street journal," august, last month, "bankers play dress up with old deals." "irresponsible securitization helped bring the financial system to its knees.

0:54:13 to 0:54:35( Edit History Discussion )

Byron Dorgan: yet, as banks start to heal, little seems to have changed. wall street has quickly fallen back on old and by the way, some of these fdi trading. they just pu a casino in their lobby.

0:54:36 to 0:54:59( Edit History Discussion )

Byron Dorgan: they just as well be playing ke. n novment their boardroom. "wall street's mania for short-term results hurts economy." look, the reason i wanted to go through this is i agree not much has changed. certainly not enough has changed. and the me, as we deal with this issue of financial reform is: will we address a central issue

0:55:00 to 0:55:21( Edit History Discussion )

Byron Dorgan: for me, and that is the too-big-to-fail issue. when we have decidees as a matter of there are big companies that are too big to fail - fail -- to me, that's no-fault capitalism. we saw that last fall. we had the treasury secretary come to the congress and he said on the one hand a friday, if you don't pass a three-page bill

0:55:22 to 0:55:44( Edit History Discussion )

Byron Dorgan: giving me $700 billion and dot in three days, there is eminent collapse of the american econ the fact is i didn't vote for the $7 blion because i didn't think he had the foggiest idea what he was going to do with that money. but the plain fact is as well as the very firms that did the kind of damage that steered this economy into the ditch -- by the

0:55:45 to 0:56:07( Edit History Discussion )

Byron Dorgan: way, one then-treas previously worked for -- dramatically expanding leverage, engaged in unbelievably sophisticated, exotic products that they cou understand but you didn't to understand them as long as you were making a lot of them, securitizing almost everything, the scandal in

0:56:08 to 0:56:28( Edit History Discussion )

Byron Dorgan: subprime loans, paying massive bonuses to brokers to put mortgages out there called liars' loans, people didn't have to describe their income for in order to get a mortgage, and then securitize the good wi the bad and slice and dice like you were cutting sausage and sell them up to hedge funds and investment banks. everybody w

0:56:29 to 0:56:49( Edit History Discussion )

Byron Dorgan: making all kinds of money despite the fact that they were creating this house of cards and the house of cards collapsed. and you had all of these firms with exposure, and then weerm told, you know what you got to bail them out. they're too bhig to faism the american taxpayer has to come up, open their

0:56:50 to 0:57:10( Edit History Discussion )

Byron Dorgan: provide the funds because these firms are too big to fail. when we do financial reform, there's too little discussion about this. all the di these stories, wall street is back in business again. banks still trading in derivatives on the proprietary account. they just as well put up a blackjack table in their lobby. nothing is change. and so the question is, when we

0:57:11 to 0:57:31( Edit History Discussion )

Byron Dorgan: get to this point -- and it is very soon, i hope -- will we seriously address the doctrine of too-big-to-fail? because if we don't, we will go down exactly the same road, and mark my words, we'll find the me ditch once again. -- once again for this economy. we must address this issue of

0:57:32 to 0:57:52( Edit History Discussion )

Byron Dorgan: "too big to faivment" some of the too-big-to-fail institutions got american taxpayer and, by way, they've gotten bigger now. too big to fail. now they're too bigger to fail, i guess. doesn't sound like good english to me. but so you make them bigger?

0:57:53 to 0:58:13( Edit History Discussion )

Byron Dorgan: makes no sense. that has to be our discussion going forward. are we going to continue to have no-fault capitalism where some of the biggest financial institutions in this engaged in gambling, trading in derivatives on their own financial accounts in a while the bank is fdic-insured.

0:58:14 to 0:58:34( Edit History Discussion )

Byron Dorgan: are we going to continue to allow that? or are we finally going to decide that this doctrine of too big to fail has to be addressed ahonk with the other along with the other issues? radio are we going to securitize everything, going to continue to allow this unbleefnl expansion of leverage? all of these are important questions. at the end of the day, for me,

0:58:35 to 0:58:56( Edit History Discussion )

Byron Dorgan: the question of the doctrine of too big to fail is overriding. we must end that and it is not just me. there are a good many economists that feel that that must be a part of our financial reform. now, my hope is that in the coming month or so following the

0:58:57 to 0:59:17( Edit History Discussion )

Byron Dorgan: discussion that we turn to financial reform, and i'm going to be on the floor talking again about the doctrine of too big to fail an board's notion of what that doctrine means and what their responsibilities are. madam president, i yield the floor, and i make a point

0:59:18 to 0:59:36( Edit History Discussion )

Byron Dorgan: of order that a quorum is not present. the presiding o clerk will call the roll. quorum call: