Resiliency for Ranching and Natural Conservation Health Act

Mr. President, last year, this body unanimously passed 41 bills from the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Now, 16 of those bills, for one reason or another, didn't end up getting signed into law last year. Some of those bills perhaps were casualties of the legislative calendar but for one reason or another didn't make it through but remained undisputed and remained noncontroversial. They have been reintroduced by Republican and Democratic Senators and are cleared on the Republican side of the aisle.

It is important to note here that these noncontroversial, bipartisan bills all remain completely unchanged. Not a single letter, not a single period, comma, or exclamation mark has been altered on them. They remain utterly noncontroversial--not a whiff of partisan dispute between them.

In the past, these bills were, in many circumstances, packaged together. It has been something of a custom in the Senate to package together groups of bills. Lands bills in some cases were paired together as part of much larger bills.

In some instances, parts of some of those bills were themselves controversial--larger bills, bills that were sometimes written in secret and not available to individual Members to review prior to the time that they were propounded for a unanimous consent request on the floor.

So today, I am going to make an entirely reasonable offer to move four bills off of the floor from among that group that passed last year by unanimous consent in the Senate. They are unchanged, they are still noncontroversial, and they carry no substantive policy objections, no objections to the merits of the bill and what they do. They are bills that are locally supported, bills that have been thoroughly vetted by the committee of jurisdiction and that are ready to move today.

In short, they are bills that are ready to move in the same type of open, Member-driven process that the Senate was built for and that the Senate, quite frankly, prides itself in fostering and encouraging rather than being held hostage for a larger backroom deal negotiated in secret.

The first is a bill from Senator Barrasso that would provide commonsense flexibility for ranchers during natural disasters to help ensure rangeland health on Federal lands.

The second is a bill that I have introduced called the Utah Wildfire Research Institute Act, which would add Utah as a fourth location for the Southwest Ecological Research Institutes, which would be housed, for the Utah portion of it, at Utah State University. This institute would foster collaboration to promote healthy forests, wildfire prevention, and resilient water supplies. Utah is well positioned and ready to work with the other institutes, including the New Mexico Forest and Watershed Restoration Institute, to protect the unique landscapes and communities across the Western United States.

The third bill is one from Senator Cortez Masto, the Sloan Canyon Conservation and Lateral Pipeline Act.

This bill would make certain boundary changes and would authorize a right-of-way for the Horizon Lateral water pipeline in Nevada-- something important to Nevadans as a desert State like mine. Water for Nevadans is very important.

The fourth bill is one from Senator Padilla which would adjust the boundary of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.

Now, again, just to reiterate, all four of these bills have certain things in common. They do different things. They operate in different parts of the country. They have different sponsors from different political parties. But they all have a few features in common: They all passed by unanimous consent in this body just a few months ago. Not a single Republican, not a single Democrat objected to any of them. They remain entirely unchanged and entirely noncontroversial.

If there is any outstanding policy issue, I would love to be made aware of it and would love to address it, but as of this moment, I am not aware of one--not on the House side and not even on the Senate side.

So to that end, as if in legislative session and notwithstanding rule XXII, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources be discharged and the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of the following bills en bloc: S. 211, Resiliency For Ranching and Natural Conservation Health Act from Senator Barrasso; S. 457, Utah Wildfire Research Institute Act of 2025 from myself and Senator Curtis; S. 1142, Golden Gate National Recreation Area from Senator Padilla; S. 392, Sloan Canyon Conservation and Lateral Pipeline Act from Senator Cortez Masto; further, that the bills be considered read a third time and passed and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table, all en bloc.

Mr. President, I appreciate the characteristically thoughtful and thorough remarks by my friend and colleague the distinguished Senator from Washington. I do want to be clear about a couple of things.

No. 1, this has been the product of a lot of effort on our part, good-faith efforts that we have made to work with Ranking Member Heinrich and Members of both political parties to move these bills to the floor to get them passed over many months.

Now, again, I want to reiterate that if there are substantive policy concerns with any of the bills in this package, understanding that these are only four bills--those four bills don't comment on--they neither preclude nor prejudice in any way, shape, or form our ability to pass other bills.

Anytime you are choosing a finite group of legislative proposals to be considered for adoption by unanimous consent or through any other expedited process, you are necessarily excluding others that are not on that list. And so it becomes incumbent upon those involved in the effort to decide which ones belong.

Let's talk a little bit about how we go about that, how we went about that here with these bills. These are four of the bills that, again, passed the Senate unanimously just a few months ago that remain unchanged in this conference; that didn't draw a single ``no'' vote, a single objection from any Republican or from any Democrat. In that respect, they all have things in common, even though they operate in different States, have different sponsors from different political parties and do different things.

The bill of which my friend and colleague, the distinguished Senator from the State of Washington, refers does quite opposite of those things. I am sure she put an enormous amount of effort into it. I am sure it is important to her. And I am sure it has been carefully drafted because my friend and colleague, the distinguished Senator from the State of Washington, is thorough.

But there are some things that bill doesn't have in common with these. In fact, harkening back to childhood, there is a song called ``One of These Things Is Not Like the Other.'' If you were trying to include that bill in a list of these bills, that would be the clear standout. Why? No. 1, it hasn't passed the Senate; No. 2, it was considered in the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, and it resulted in strict party line votes--Democrats vs. Republicans, Shirts vs. Skins. There was not a single vote overlapping between the two parties.

That doesn't mean it is not a good bill. It doesn't mean it is not important to her or the people in the State of Washington. But it does mean it lacks the core characteristics held in common by each and every one of the bills I just offered by unanimous consent.

If that is going to be the standard, that anytime there is any package of bills--a package consists of two paired sets, a Republican and Democratic legislation brought forward together; in this case, bills that drew not a single ``no'' vote, not a single objection from Members of either party and remained unchanged since that last happened. If anytime we try to offer those bills, it is appropriate to object in the absence of any substantive on-the-merits objection or concern with the legislation, it is going to be very difficult for us to get this done.

Now, none of this means we couldn't find a way to pair that with something that would make sense, coupled with any changes that Members of both parties might insist on in order to make them comfortable with moving it forward. But it does mean that it would be incongruous, illogical, counterproductive, and destructive to the effort to pair that bill with this bill.

That is a wilderness bill. By definition, by its very nature, it designates large tracts of wilderness and large scenic rivers. It is not something inherently repugnant to either party, but it ended up drawing objections and ``no'' votes from literally every Republican on the committee. That suggests to me that before it is ready to be included in a unanimous consent request, it might need some additional work.

I am confident we can get it there. Most types of legislation can get to the point where objections can be addressed through some combination of

modifications to the legislation itself and the legislation that it might be paired with in order to help offset those objections.

But, nonetheless, I will keep working to pass bipartisan bills that have unanimous support. I hope and expect and respectfully request that my colleagues across the aisle would take into account these dissimilarities. If they want to add others that meet similar characteristics, let's have that conversation. If they want to get to the point where we can pass Senator Murray's bill, I am sure there is a way that could be considered and we could possibly get there.

But we can't assume that you can pair something that is that dissimilar; that is, by its very nature and according to the legislative record, it is the very definition of partisan and not the kind of thing that one can expect. We would be crazy to assume that something that resulted in a party line committee vote last year would suddenly get to the floor and not draw a single Republican objection.

I would also hope that next time, when we add pairings to the floor-- Democrat and Republican bills--I would love to see those hotlined on the other side of the aisle in the same format of which they were hotlined on our side. My understanding is they were not; and they should be. There should be an apples-to-apples comparison. If they are given the opportunity, I can't imagine that many, if any, of my Democratic colleagues would object to any of these bills in isolation. If they wouldn't object to them in isolation based on their substantive policy merits and if they were given that in a hotline request, I think this would have turned out differently.

I do think it is important we should pass bills expeditiously and in the light of day. These bills have gone through public examination in the light of day, and they have been found not wanting for bipartisanship. They have been found richly blessed with bipartisanship through a proven, undisputed track record.

So, look, I think it is a big mistake to hold noncontroversial bills put forward by Senators in good faith--to hold those hostage in order to perpetuate a broken and sometimes corrupting process from a bygone era, one in which bills were prevented from passing, not because they were controversial but because they were popular and being used as bait in order to bring about the passage of other bills that were controversial. That makes no sense.

What makes the Senate work best are those moments when we can identify things as to which we do not disagree. This, Mr. President, is one of those things. This, Mr. President, is where we can do better; and do better we must.

I am not going away. I will be back. I will be back soon--hopefully, successful next time--and we will do what we have to do in order to move the legislative process.

I humbly implore my friends and colleagues on both sides of the aisle: Let's not take these moments where we do agree for granted. Let's not assume that just because anytime--by definition, anytime you come up with a list of four bills offered at once, that necessarily excludes the thousands of others that may be submitted during the course of any particular Congress in that legislative Chamber.

You can't get everything all at once. Why not take the things that we know can pass and have passed in the past? Let's get that done.

Mr. President, as President Trump begins his second term, I am concerned about his immigration policy, pardons for violent insurrectionists of January 6, and the grifters seeping into the White House. In each of these areas, I am prepared to fight with every tool at my disposal to stop abuses that harm Americans.

But I also believe we must find areas of agreement where we can, and one of those areas could be addressing the astronomical cost of prescription drugs, a real-life issue facing American families.

Thankfully, last week, President Biden announced 15 new drugs that Medicare will now bargain for, to lower prices for seniors across the America. Remember, those savings are only possible because of the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, which did not receive a single Republican vote.

There is more work to do though. On average, patients in the United States of America pay four times more--four times more--than people in similar countries for the exact same drugs. What is going on here? A drug is made in America and sold at four times the cost in America as is charged by the same companies overseas.

Why is the United States such an outlier? One reason is advertising. Have you noticed any ads for drugs on television lately? If you haven't, you don't have a TV. The United States is one of only two industrialized countries in the world that allows pharmaceutical companies to advertise on television. What is the other country that allows this? New Zealand--the United States and New Zealand.

You know these ads I am talking about--catchy jingles, flashy images; patients rock climbing, swimming, dancing. Big Pharma spends--get this now--$6 billion every year to flood the airwaves about the latest wonder drug. Why do they spend so darn much money on drug ads? Because it increases their profits. Big Pharma thinks, if they can pummel you with enough ads, not only will you be able to spell Xarelto, but you will be able to tell your doctor this is the blood thinner you have been waiting for.

Don't take my word for it. Here is what the American Medical Association says about these ads we are inundated with every single darn day on our televisions:

Direct-to-consumer advertising inflates demand for new and

expensive drugs, even when these drugs may not be

appropriate.

So when President Biden announced a list of 15 drugs that will be negotiated for discounts, I imagined most Americans already recognized many of their names: Ozempic, Trelegy, Ibrance, and Otezla.

Manufacturers spend hundreds of millions of dollars encouraging you to just ``ask your doctor'' about these drugs. The result? Medicare spent $22 billion last year on those very same four drugs that were heavily advertised medications.

A recent headline in the New York Times read:

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Wants to Ban Drug Ads on TV. It

Wouldn't Be Easy.

It discussed the First Amendment challenges Pharma would raise as a result of that.

While I have strong concerns with President Trump's health nominee, I am glad this administration wants to join me to tackle these promotional ads. We already have an incredible strategy on the table.

For the last 8 or 9 years, I have introduced bipartisan legislation to crack down on these drug ads on TV and other places. Senator Chuck Grassley, Republican of Iowa, has been my partner.

When you turn on the evening news--get this--one-third of all commercial time is for prescription drugs. Do you think you are seeing a lot of ads? One-third of all commercial time is for prescription drugs.

Try to avoid it, if you wish. But the average American sees nine drug ads a day. I will bet it is more. It seems like more.

With billions in targeted spending, patients are bombarded with information. All of this information is being tossed at you, most of it at a mile-a-minute gibberish. But they do keep in the darkness one important factor: They never mention the cost, the price of the drug.

In 2023, Illinois company AbbVie spent $315 million on TV ads for Rinvoq. I have an ad here. Rinvoq is an eczema and arthritis drugs. However, in the commercial, they don't tell you one thing. The cost of this drug is $6,100 per month. My staff just corrected me before I came to the floor and said: You missed the latest increase. It is now up to $6,400 a month for Rinvoq.

Hang on. I am sure you will see one of those ads in no time at all.

Senator Grassley and I think it is time to end the big secrecy on the cost of these drugs. If they are going to advertise it and rattle off gibberish--I love the one that says: Don't take Otezla if you are allergic to Otezla.

That never would have dawned on me. That is part of their ad.

If you are looking at the ads and hearing the gibberish they throw at us, they tell you everything under God's green Earth, except a basic honest issue: How much does it cost?

That is why today we are introducing bipartisan legislation to require price disclosures in direct-to-consumer drug ads.

Our plan is simple. It actually passed the Senate once before, in 2018, and 88 percent of the American people support this kind of disclosure. In fact, after we worked to advance this measure, Donald Trump, then President of the United States, said this, and I want to make sure the quote is accurate. This is from his first term in office:

Big announcement today: Drug companies have to come clean

about their prices in TV ads. Historic transparency for

American patients is here. If drug companies are ashamed of

those prices--lower them!

I may disagree with the President on many things, but I certainly agree with this statement there.

Big Pharma hates being honest with patients about the true prices of their drugs. They fear it might cut into their colossal historic profits. With the support of President Trump and Senator Grassley, I believe this will be the year we finally pass bipartisan legislation to bring sunshine to these ads and to actually lower health costs.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, and I appreciate the Senator from Utah being here tonight to offer this package, but I believe there needs to be a more bipartisan and thoughtful way to consider how we protect the future of our public lands.

For example, the legislation that the senior Senator from Utah wants to pass tonight does not include my Wild Olympics bill. Now, this is a bill that will help preserve the wild and scenic rivers of the Olympic Peninsula. That has very strong support from Democrats and Republicans in my State. There is a strong nonpartisan coalition of support for this bill from Tribes, hunters, fishermen, conservationists, and even loggers. That is because my bill supports the peninsula economy and ensures continued access to our world-class outdoor recreation on the Olympic Peninsula, and it preserves critical habitat for salmon and water resources for our very rural communities.

Moreover, this bill has passed the House several times now with bipartisan support. In fact, I have been working on this for over a decade to build support and consensus around this bill. It is carefully drafted, it is a thoughtful piece of legislation, and the grassroots support for this bill has only grown over the years. That is exactly the kind of bill which should be included in a bipartisan public lands package.

I would invite the senior Senator from Utah to visit the land this bill covers, to help protect our Olympic National Forest.

I think you would find out why I am here tonight objecting to this because it doesn't include it.

I want the Senator from Utah to know that my door is always open. I hope that in the future, we can work together in drafting a public lands bill that does include legislation like my Wild Olympics bill, and I know I am not alone. Many of our colleagues have worked on important legislation for their respective States.

So for now, I object, but I do so with my hand outstretched, ready to work with the Senator together on a public lands package that is comprehensive.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.