Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, this afternoon and earlier in the Special Orders, our colleague, the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Burton), talked about a meeting that we had, a forum that we conducted today in Boston, Massachusetts. We had about seven or eight Members of the House, and we had a forum talking about the issue of prescription drugs and how much Americans pay for prescription drugs relative to what industrialized countries around the world pay for those same drugs. It was sort of appropriate that we had this forum in Boston; and I observed at the beginning of the meeting that a little over 200 years ago there were patriots who began to throw tea in Boston Harbor because a king in England had imposed a half-penny tax on tea, and they were mad as hell and they were not going to take it anymore. That same spirit of that Boston Tea Party was alive today and that spirit is growing.

At that forum we had Governor Pawlenty of the State of Minnesota. I have to tell my colleagues I was so proud of him because he outlined the plan that he has for Minnesotans to allow them to have access to world-class drugs at world market prices. Now, he did not put a number on it, but my estimate is that Minnesotans will save at least $50 million by simply opening up markets as we do with virtually every other product. He also said in his remarks that the States are the laboratories of democracy and that it is time for the States to take the leadership and demonstrate what can be done in terms of opening up markets and saving consumers billions.

We also had the Attorney General from the State of Massachusetts. He made a very good point, that as these big pharmaceutical companies now are reaching out and saying we are not going to ship as many drugs to Canada, he reminded us and them that there are antitrust laws on the books and if the Federal Government will not enforce them, then the States will.

We also had representatives from Governor Blagojevich from the State of Illinois who talked about their plan and his plan and how he believes that they can save the State of Illinois $91 million. That is $91 million that can be spent on children. That is $91 million that can be spent on firefighters and police officers to keep the State safer.

We also had Dr. Steve Schondelmeir, who is a pharmacist himself, teaches pharmacology at the University of Minnesota. He estimated that Americans next year will spend at least $220 billion on prescription drugs. He went on to say that he believed that if you simply opened up markets, that markets would begin to level. He agrees with me or I agree with him that the goal is not for Americans to go to other countries to buy prescription drugs; the goal is to open up markets, and markets level. Prices here in the

United States would come down at least 30 percent.

Now, I am not good in mathematics, but 30 percent of $220 billion is over $60 billion a year. That would be the largest tax cut we could ever give the American people. If the goal of the tax cut is to allow Americans to keep and spend more of their own money, then market access certainly should be part of that equation.

We also had Dr. Elizabeth Wenner, who has her own program going in the State of Vermont to encourage the patients there in her clinics to buy their drugs and make it easier for them to legally and safely buy those drugs from pharmacists across the border in Canada. She has numbers to demonstrate how much their patients have saved; and the average, believe it or not, is over 60 percent.

Then we had Mayor Albano, the mayor of Springfield, Massachusetts. He began his voluntary plan for city employees there and he has only been operating for a few months, and his estimates are that they have saved $600,000. We are talking about real money, I say to my colleagues. It is not just about seniors; it is about everybody.

Victor Hugo said, more powerful than an invading army is an idea whose time has come. I do not know what is going to happen in the conference committee, but I know this: you cannot hold back an idea whose time has come.

Madam Speaker, I have come to the well of this House many times in the evening and in the day to talk about the high cost of prescription drugs and how much Americans pay for drugs relative to the rest of the industrialized world. I believe it is a crime, and I believe it is shame on us. I always say it is not shame on the pharmaceutical companies, it is shame on us, because the FDA and the Justice Department work for us. I have been regularly vocal and very critical of our FDA and what they have done in terms of, quote, protecting the public health. I have repeatedly said that a drug you

cannot afford is neither safe nor effective.

Tonight, Madam Speaker, I come to the floor of the House to offer some congratulations, because if you are going to hand out the thorns, I think once in a while you have to hand out the roses. First, I would like to congratulate the people at the FDA because today there was a conference held in Bethesda, and they were participants in that conference. What they talked about was new technologies to make our drug supply safer, so that whether you buy your drugs from Manhattan or Munich, you will be able to get safe drugs. I want to talk about a couple of those technologies and the FDA was there to talk about it. One of them is this tamperproof, counterfeit-proof technology. This packaging is made by a little company out in California called Flex Products. They also make the dye that goes on our $20 bills that make it almost impossible, although they and I think the Federal Treasury says that this is impossible to counterfeit, the same technology is now available for pharmaceutical companies. And I am told that seven of the largest pharmaceutical companies are already employing this technology.

Let me also talk about another technology. This is the first time I have ever talked about it here on the floor of the House. This is made by a family-owned feed and seed company in Minneapolis, Minnesota, a little company called Cargill. These are microscopic markers. They are edible and they are so small that you cannot even see one. But we now have the ability to apply this to every drug. In fact, we can even apply this to the products that go into the drugs, so that we can know that that drug is in fact what is said that it is very simply. That was also on display today at that conference.

But, Madam Speaker, what I really want to do is say a special thank you to some of the senior groups that have stepped up. I want to single out one in particular, the TREA Senior Citizens League, who is made up of just some of the most wonderful people, and their board is here tonight. I want to show an ad that they ran earlier this year. They were one of the few senior citizens groups that used real money, contributed by their seniors, and they ran this half-page ad encouraging Congress, and I want to make sure that we can put at least the text of this into the Congressional Record. I want to thank them, and I want to thank George Smith, their chairman, who serves on their board. What a wonderful board it is. These are people who volunteer. They do not get paid large retainers. All that they do is work on behalf of their members and on behalf of seniors everywhere. When they saw what was happening to the cost of prescription drugs, they stepped up, and they made a difference. I want to thank them. And I want to thank our former colleague Dave Funderburk. Congressman and Dr. Funderburk was a valuable Member of the Congress. He and his wife Betty have just been super people. They help steer the Senior Citizens League through some of the choppy waters and explain how things happen. It is groups like that that are making a difference. They are stepping up and saying there is something wrong, we need to do something about it. We need to fix it. They have run ads. They have informed their members. They represent 1.2 million members around the country. They are the second largest senior citizens group in the country. I have to take my hat off to them because, as I say, they stepped up, they helped run ads, they used real money, they did not take it from some other special interest group and they are making a difference.

We are going to have to vote here in the next couple of weeks perhaps on a prescription drug bill. We are going to have to ask ourselves some simple questions. One of those questions is why is it that Americans pay so much more than consumers around the rest of the industrialized world? The second question is, what are we going to do about it? I hope you will be able to give us good answers because I think we are going to get a chance to vote on that.

The House has done the right thing. We are waiting on the other body. We hope that we will have a conference committee. People like the TREA Senior Citizens League are watching. They are paying attention. Their members are watching. They are paying attention. They are making a difference. They are counting on us to do the same.

TREA Senior Citizens League Ad

Congress: Senior citizens need you to vote ``Aye'' on H.R.

2427, prescription drug importation legislation.

This week, Congress will have the opportunity to help

seniors by voting ``aye'' on H.R. 2447, legislation to allow

America's seniors ``market'' access to lower priced

medicines.

The bill would mean seniors would pay a more reasonable

price for their prescriptions, and would mean that many

seniors wouldn't have to choose between their medications,

and rent and food.

The pharmaceutical industry, however, doesn't want this

critical legislation to pass. Some are more concerned about

making the best possible profit, rather than making a profit

while still allowing seniors to have access to safe,

affordable medicines. This is wrong.

Vote for our seniors--not for special interests.

Well, if the gentleman would yield, I think President Reagan had it best, quoting John Adams, when he said, ``Facts are stubborn things.''

I want to congratulate the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Burton), the gentleman from Vermont (Mr. Sanders), the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Emanuel), the gentlewoman from (Mrs. Emerson) and so many other people in the House.

This is not a single-person issue. We have been involved in this for many years. The gentleman from Indiana (Chairman Burton) has been among the only chairmen here in this Congress who have been willing to have real hearings and bring in both sides and let both sides present their case and let the facts come out.

Once again, the facts do not support that. We know, for example, how many people have died from taking legal FDA approved drugs from other countries. It is a nice, round number, easy to remember: It is zero. We know that more people become ill and die from eating foods, fruits and vegetables, which the FDA is also responsible for, than they ever will with the drugs we are talking about.

More importantly, this is happening now. Americans are doing this right now, many of them knowing that, technically, the FDA says this is illegal. I do not necessarily agree that this is illegal.

Congressional intent is very clear: We intend to make this legal, and we intend to make it safer, using tamper-proof, counterfeit-proof packaging, which is not required today, actually making this business even safer.

The gentleman is absolutely right. The drug Lipitor, for example, every single tablet is imported into the United States, because it is only made in Ireland in an FDA-approved facility. When they ship into the United States, they do not bring it in in armored cars, they bring it in in big bulk containers that sit on a loading dock in New Jersey for a week or so. If there is any chance to get in there and tamper with those drugs, there is a much better chance at that time than in an individual package.

So, ultimately the safety argument, and I think most Members and Americans, voting with their feet, have come to the same conclusion, the safety argument is just pure bogus.

Mr. Speaker, I rise again to speak tonight on the issue of prescription drugs and what Americans pay relative to the rest of the industrialized world.

I want to call all Members' attention, if you have not seen this yet, get a copy of today's USA Today and read the lead story. And if you missed it today we are going to try and put this on our Web site, so Members may go to my Web site at Gil.house.gov; and we will have this on by sometime tomorrow afternoon.

And we will have the charts, because this is the most compelling article, I think, that I have read so far because it tells the story, it tells the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth in terms of what Americans pay and the sad and pathetic excuse by the FDA about how unsafe this is. It is just outrageous. It is the Food and Drug Administration.

This estimate is 1 million. We have had estimates that as many as 10 million Americans next year will buy their drugs from another country.

Now, what my vision is is not that people will buy their drugs from other countries, but once you open up markets and you begin to use tamper-proof, counterfeit-proof packaging, you will be able to buy those drugs from your local pharmacy and take advantage of market forces to bring the drug prices down.

As my colleague from Indiana pointed out earlier, the chart on the front talks about how much more Americans pay than the consumers in other countries. I have often said I am willing to subsidize the people in sub-Saharan Africa, I do not think we ought to have to subsidize the starving Swiss. It is time for them to pay their fair share for the cost of prescription drugs. The surest way to do that is to open up markets so you will see prices level around the world. And Americans will pay a lot less.

How much less? Well, the Swiss pay 58 percent less than American consumers. In Great Britain they pay 60 percent less. In Canada they pay 67 percent less than American consumers. In France they pay 102 percent less than American consumers. And in Italy, 112 percent. Now these are not backwater countries, ladies and gentlemen. These are industrialized countries that have regimens similar to ours.

If you go to the inside of USA Today it even gets better because they list some of the prices. I have shown my charts and I have had people say, Oh, well, that is from some goofy group, or, You cannot accept that. Well, these are not my charts anymore. These are charts that were done with research by USA Today.

When you look at the price differentials, it is exactly what my charts have shown. And that is, for example, on the drug Coumadin, which my 87-year-old father takes, it is a blood thinner, I have a package right here that we bought in Munich, Germany. It is Coumadin, it was developed at the University of Wisconsin Agricultural Schools as a rat poison, but Coumandin can be bought in Canada, 10 milligrams, 100 tablets, for $43.58. That same package in the United States sells for $99.99.

Tamoxifen, we have talked about that before here on the House floor. In the United States this particular package that they bought was $61.99. The same package of the drug in Canada sells for $9.04. That is more than six times as much.

Members, the time has come for us to take real action.

I want to congratulate others in the House who helped lead the fight so that at least the House now has gone on record that this is unacceptable. More importantly, we have sent a message not only to the pharmaceutical industry but to our own FDA. The FDA does not work for them; they work for us. It is time for the Senate, the Members in the other body to do the same thing, to send the message that the status quo is not acceptable.

Americans are voting with their feet. They are voting with their feet to buy prescription drugs. But remember, Members, next November they are going to vote for us or our opponents based on how we voted on issues like whether or not we will have affordable drugs here in the United States of America.

Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 11 o'clock and 59 minutes p.m.), the House adjourned until tomorrow, Thursday, September 11, 2003, at 10 a.m.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take the time of the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Burgess).

Mr. Speaker, I will try to handle two tributes this evening. The first is to our baseball team from Minnesota, the Rochester A's.

This summer coaches Keith Kangas and Tony Beck brought together kids from Minnesota to reach a pinnacle in baseball.

Tonight I rise in recognition of the Rochester A's who won the American Legion World Series Championship in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, just a few weeks ago. Utilizing imagination, skill, and a whole lot of moxie, these kids made an improbable journey, becoming only the fourth team from Minnesota in the series' 77-year history to win this prestigious championship.

The A's made the most of their God-given skills to beat long odds and finished an astonishing 52 and 5. Perhaps the most difficult of the 52 victories in route to the ALWS was a rain delayed victory over a tough New Ulm team who was also from southern Minnesota. During an overnight rain delay pitcher Mike Badger and shortstop Danny Lyons devised a scheme in their hotel room. With a score of 6 to 4, a runner on second with the tying run at the plate with a 3 and 1 count, Badger would pick off the runner without ever throwing a pitch. With a trademark bit of tweaking, Coach Kangas suggested that Badger should throw a strike first making the count full, encouraging the runner to lean just a little heavier toward third base. Badger obliged, and then picked off the runner, sending the A's to the World Series.

Every game had a story of its own. I congratulate coaches Keith Kangas and Tony Beck, and all of the players and the team manager for their national championship season. For all of us who have ever tossed a ball around the backyard or taken a position on a baseball diamond, the A's are an inspiration, and I say congratulations.

Legion ball is a slice of Americana. There are no million dollar contracts. They play for the love of the game. In the play ``Damn Yankees!'' one of the immortal songs is ``You gotta have heart.'' Well, this was a team with heart. These truly were the boys of summer.

Mr. Speaker, secondly, I would like to pay a tribute to those on September 11.

Freedom loving Americans will gather across our great land to remember the heroes lost on September 11, 2001. Nothing we can say will adequately lighten the burden borne by so many. The best we can say is we will never forget. Wrapping ourselves in the cloak of freedom, we can become comfortable and complacent, but our greater purpose is to share it with the world. President Reagan said it is up to us to work together for progress and humanity so that our grandchildren when they look back at us can truly say we not only preserved the flame of freedom, but cast its warmth and light further than those who came before us.

Out of the ashes of hatred, Americans held up the lamp of liberty, casting its light throughout the world. Each generation has its own charge. Ours is to bring freedom to those who have never known it. Ours is to bring hope and opportunity where none exists. Ours is to share our goodness so others can be great. May God comfort those who hearts still ache. May he continue to bless America and all who defend her.

Mr. Chairman, I would like to thank the gentleman from Vermont for yielding me time.

Mr. Chairman, it has been my privilege since I have been in public life to represent thousands of IBM employees in Rochester, Minnesota. In fact, approximately 6,000. I do not know how much of the story has been told, but this is a serious subject.

Now, I come at this not only as a representative of over 6,000 IBMers, but I come at this as a former member of the Legislative Commission on Pensions and Retirement. So I am not saying I am an expert on pension policy, but this is something I probably know a little more about than the average Member of Congress.

As the gentleman from Illinois just said, the concept of these cash balance plans or defined contribution plans, modified defined contribution plans, is not necessarily a bad idea. For many younger employees who are going to change careers and jobs throughout their careers, this probably makes some sense. But the bottom line for older workers, workers who have been with a company for perhaps 20 years, this is a shameless attempt to try and steal pension money. Part of the reason that IBM lost that lawsuit in southern Illinois is because the facts did not support their position.

I want to talk a little bit about a different dimension to this, because I do also agree with the gentleman from Illinois; we can craft a plan that is a win-win situation, that would allow companies to convert their pension plans, with one caveat: that you give vested employees a choice.

Let me just read from the dictionary the definition of the term ``vested.'' The definition is ``settled, fixed or absolute; being without contingency, as in a vested right.''

The way you do this, Mr. Chairman, is you literally say to those employees who have been vested that you get a choice. The companies can make a conversion, if they want, for any new hires. They can even make a conversion for those employees who have not vested. But at the least, we ought to agree with this amendment that the Federal Government and its resources should not be used to appeal this particular case. This is a very important case.

Let me just talk to the Republicans for a minute. Understand, I am not sure that Republicans understand what is at stake here and who really is involved. We are not just talking about 6,000 IBMers; we are talking about literally hundreds of thousands of other people, most of them who are 45 years of age or older, who have been with a company for a very long time, many of them what we would call professional people, college-educated, technically trained people. Let me be very blunt: 75 percent of them vote Republican. They understand this issue, if it has happened to them or if they are afraid that it will happen to them.

In fact, go back to the issue of vested. TIAA-KREFF, when they put out a questionnaire or they put out some questions and answers when people sign up for their various pension plans, let me read Question 7 and the answer. I do not have to read the answer.

The question is, ``When do my plan contributions become vested?'' And then in parentheses it says ``i.e., owned by me.''

Now, what 6,000 IBMers found out, I should say probably 5,000 of them at least who were vested, what they found out is there is no legal definition of the word ``vested.''

They came into work one day and they had calculators. As part of their computer tool kit on their computers, they had pension calculators which would literally calculate for them how much their pension would be worth if they stayed with the company until they retired at age 65 or 66, whatever the age was. They could do their little calculation of how much their pension was worth.

All of a sudden they came in one day and IBM changed the pension plan. For a few days IBM made a huge mistake. They left the calculators on the employees' computer screens. They could

very quickly do the calculations in terms of how much the old pension plan was worth to them and then how much the new pension plan was worth to them.

They did not have to be computer experts to begin to figure out that all of a sudden they had lost, in some cases, hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of pension benefits that they thought were vested.

Mr. Chairman, we should not mess with this. I agree with the chairman from Oklahoma. I do not think the Congress should be messing with this. I do not think the administration should be messing with this. I think this should be left to the courts.

He said, well, this is not pension law. But, understand, and I hope the gentleman from Oklahoma is paying attention here, because pension law is set in several different ways. First of all, it is what is in statute. It is also what is in rule. That is what we are concerned about.

The other thing we are concerned about that is really at issue today is in terms of precedent in the courts. In some respects, this administration is taking a wrong turn by getting involved in this issue. This is an explosive political issue. If you do not believe it, I would ask you to come to my hometown and have a town hall meeting, or have a committee meeting, if you want to hear from 6,000 IBMers.

This is a good amendment. This is the right thing to do. It ought to be included in this bill.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time.

This is an ad, I say to my colleagues, that ran in today's New York Times and it ran in some other newspapers I think here on Capitol Hill as well. It says, ``Don't destroy America's pension system. Vote no on the Sanders amendment.'' It says, the Sanders amendment to the Treasury Appropriation bill threatens to outlaw vast numbers of pension plans.'' Well, that is just outrageous. That is simply not true. We do not outlaw any pension plans.

It goes on to say, ``Prevent pension plans from protecting employees' pensions against inflation while they wait to receive their benefits.'' That is not true. The Sanders amendment does not do that.

All this amendment does, I say to my colleagues, is it says the Federal Government, the Federal taxpayers should not join in this lawsuit against workers. I mean, these workers literally have had pension benefits stolen from them and we are saying, at least the administration should be kept from joining sides with the company. This is the most outrageous ad since the prescription drug ads that they were running a few weeks ago.

Now, the gentleman from Vermont (Mr. Sanders) and I agree on almost nothing, but twice a year we agree on two things. One is the prescription drug prices and the other is pension policy.

This is a good amendment. It ought to be included in this bill. It is outrageous for the administration to join sides with companies that are trying to steal from pensions.

I say to my colleagues, we have to understand, pensions are in trust. We had this when I was on the pension commission back in Minnesota. One year there was a firefighter from Winona who embezzled something like $200,000 from the Winona Firefighters Pension Fund. And both sides came in and said, it is not my money. It is not my money. The money that was embezzled belonged to the city, or it was not our money that was embezzled. And then, when the pension fund started to get better rates of return and they were making more money than they needed, then the groups were coming in and saying, wait a second. That is our money.

The fact of the matter is pension money does not belong to the company and it does not belong to the employees. It is in trust. And when they make these conversions, the real purpose is to take that money, in effect, out of the trust and put it on to the bottom line of the companies.

This is a good idea. This amendment should be added to this bill.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me the time, and I rise in reluctant support of this bill.

This is the people's House. This is an historic night. Tonight we will decide whether we represent the people or whether we represent the big pharmaceutical companies. This is an important vote, and I am proud of the discussion we have heard here tonight. It is Republicans, it is Democrats, it is Independents.

This is not an issue of right versus left. This is an issue of right versus wrong, and we have an opportunity tonight to right that wrong, and the wrong is all around us and we see it.

Look at the numbers. I am just a guy with a chart. I do not have a big PAC. I do not have 600 lobbyists, but I have got charts and I have got facts, and John Adams said it best, Facts are stubborn things, and look at the facts.

Look what Americans pay for these drugs. Look what my father has to pay for coumadin in the United States, almost $90. The same drug can be bought in Germany for $21. Look at glucophage, $5 in Germany, $29.95 here in the United States.

The worst one is this one, Tamoxifen. This is a lifesaver for women with breast cancer. It sells in the United States for $360. This same drug made in the same plant under the same FDA approval sells in Germany for $60. That is unacceptable, and those who defend the system by saying safety, let them explain how it is that this industrialized Nation can import hundreds of thousands of tons of food every week. We import 40 percent of our orange juice. We will import 318,000 tons of plantains, but somehow we cannot import prescription drugs.

My bill makes it even safer because we require tamper-proof, counterfeit-proof packaging. Frankly, we should not even have to require that. If I ran a pharmaceutical company, we would put that out there right now. Do my colleagues know how much this package will cost in an additional cost to pharmaceuticals? Less than a nickel to make certain that our drug system is even safer.

I support this rule. I support this debate. We ought to pass this bill tonight by an overwhelming majority.

I thank my colleagues and may God bless America.

Mr. Speaker, I just want to clarify real quickly that nothing in this bill deals with controlled substances like RU486 or morphine, and nothing in this bill would have anything to do with Ephedra.

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from Missouri (Mrs. Emerson).

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Shays), the author of the Shays act.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 15 seconds to respond.

First of all, I hope Members would at least read the bill. We have heard a lot about safety tonight. This bill specifically includes section sections 501, 502, 505, which are the safety codes. As the gentlewoman from Missouri (Mrs. Emerson) said earlier, essentially the FDA wrote all the law that is here. Secondly, the FDA has inspected, this is the report, 949 facilities, all the way to China in the last 5 years.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Hensarling).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Hoekstra), who has the unenviable task of following that.

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Osborne).

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Shadegg).

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Louisville, Kentucky (Mrs. Northup).

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Kingston).

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Flake).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Hayworth).

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, first of all, let me say thank you to the gentlewoman from Missouri (Mrs. Emerson), because we would not be having this historic debate tonight without her courage, and I want to thank her.

Mr. Speaker, I have been down on this floor many, many times with my charts, talking about this issue. I have had charts and plenty of statistics, but the saddest statistic of all that I have come across is this from the Kaiser Foundation. Twenty-nine percent of seniors say that they have had prescriptions that went unfilled because they could not afford them. Shame on us.

I was at a community pharmacists meeting a few months ago. There were 300 community pharmacists there. I asked them this question: Has this ever happened to you where someone comes into your store with a prescription, they hand you the prescription, you tell them how much it is going to be and their head drops, their voice drops, and they say, Well, maybe I'll be back tomorrow. And they never come back. Shame on us.

We have heard about safety. We have heard about intellectual property rights. No one wants unsafe drugs or to steal patents. We have heard about price controls and aren't we simply importing them. But the plain truth is today, Americans are subsidizing them.

This bill is not perfect, but it is not complicated, either. We simply take away the FDA's power to defy the will of this the people's House and in its place we put counterfeit-proof, tamper-proof packaging.

I will not question any Member's motives, but others will. If you are going to vote against this bill tonight, you had better go back to your office and write a letter to your constituents explaining exactly why, because you will be asked. Maybe it will be at a town hall or a candidates forum, or maybe in your opponent's ads next year, but you will be asked. Someone is going to hold up a package of pills and they are going to ask this: Why is it that Americans have to spend $360 for this drug, this lifesaving drug, when Germans can buy it for $60? And then they are going to ask the even tougher question: Congressman, what did you do about it?

Tonight we can send a very simple but clear message. The status quo is unacceptable, and we will not stand idly by and allow Americans to be forced to pay the world's highest prices for prescription drugs.

Members, all I ask is vote your conscience. Millions of proud Americans are counting on us.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to introduce the U.S.-Japan Maritime Youth Exchange Program and its participants for 2003. The U.S.-Japan Maritime Youth Exchange Program brings together 12 high school students (6 from each country) for a three-week program of travel and study in Japan and the United States. It was developed and funded through a partnership between the U.S. Navy Memorial Foundation in Washington, DC and the Japan Youth Research Institute beginning in 1998. The major objective of the program is to increase mutual understanding by American and Japanese youth of our maritime traditions and the importance of our continued cooperation and alliance.

The program's purpose is to teach participants about the historical, cultural, economic, and other factors that impact the two countries' maritime policies and practices. The program joins together one American cadet and one Japanese student as ``partners'' throughout the exchange. By fostering understanding, respect, teamwork and friendship, on both the individual and group levels, the program will

work to create a healthy partnership for the future and greatly benefit both countries.

Entering its sixth year, this unique opportunity takes participants to naval, cultural, and historical sites in cities such as Groton, CT, New York City, Washington, DC, and San Diego in the US; and Osaka, Hiroshima, Kyoto, and Tokyo in Japan. The students travel together for ten days in United States and ten days in Japan during July and August. Six American students are high school juniors chosen from the Naval Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps (NJROTC) program. The 12 students are chosen through a rigorous selection process by their respective countries. The six Japanese participants are chosen from throughout that nation by the Japan Youth Research Institute. Adult leaders for the program will include two Americans from the Education Institute, U.S. Navy Memorial Foundation and two Japanese from the Japan Youth Research Institute. The students learn about maritime issues with focus on the roles of the U.S. Navy and the Japan Maritime Self Defense Force.

Founded in 1977 by Navy, civic, and national leaders, the U.S. Navy Memorial Foundation is a non-partisan, educational, not-for-profit [501 (c) (3)] organization, honoring men and women of the U.S. sea services, and perpetuating their values, heritage, and traditions. The Foundation serves as an ``embassy'' to the American people and the sea services- bringing the Americans closer to the sea services and educating the significant impact and sacrifices young Sailors and Marines have and are making throughout the world in securing our freedom.

The six American students are entering their senior year of high school, have a scholastic average of at least 3.2, and have graduated from NJROTC Leadership Academy. The students are required to complete a series of research assignments as preparation for their trip, allowing a greater education benefit during this fast-paced program.

Meeting as strangers in San Diego, California, the students will quickly develop close bonds throughout their trip while visiting various maritime and historical sites in both countries. The program pairs every American and Japanese student, fostering an atmosphere of understanding, respect, and teamwork with the aim of lifetime partnerships, which will greatly benefit both countries.

Students participating in the 2003 program include Carl Beierl of Virginia Beach, VA, Zoe Harrold of Euclid, OH, Amanda Perez of Cary, NC, Natasha Rutherford of Jonesville, VA, Scott Salamone of Virginia Beach, VA, Christopher Terrell of Pensacola, FL, Yusuke Kawabata of Kanagawa, Japan, Shohei Konishi of Tokyo, Japan, Masamichi Yazaki of Hyogo, Japan, Marie Nagai of Saitama, Japan, Fumiko Miyazaki of Aichi, Japan, and Ayumi Tomatsuri of Saitama, Japan.

Madam Speaker, I rise again tonight to talk about an issue that I suspect many of my colleagues are becoming weary of, and frankly, I am as well. It is the issue of the cost of prescription drugs and what we pay in the United States compared to what the rest of the industrialized world pays for those exact same drugs.

What I have tonight is a chart. I apologize, it is a little difficult to read. I am going to hold up the back of today's Congressional Daily. It has a picture of two tablets in a little cardboard container and under it the captions says, ``Quick. Pick The Capsule That Hasn't Been Tampered With.'' And somehow we are supposed to believe that if we allow Americans to have access to FDA-approved drugs from FDA-approved facilities from around the world, that obviously people are going to tamper with them and people will die.

So we have made up our own little chart, a little comparison that says, ``Quick. Pick The Bottle That Hasn't Been Tampered With.'' Can you pick which one?

The fact of the matter is, this year we will import from other countries, and I have the exact number, $824,888,000 worth of imported wine. Now, it is altogether possible that somebody could tamper with that wine. Yet every day Americans buy bottles of wine from all over the world and they open that wine, and how do they know that it has not had arsenic put in it? They do not. We take a risk every day.

Every day Americans eat imported plantains, imported cucumbers, imported fruits, imported vegetables, and imported meat. Americans take a risk every day and we do not even inspect them. Well, I take that back, we do inspect them a little bit. About 2 percent of the products coming into the country get inspected. But, nonetheless, if you eat an imported food that has some form of food-borne pathogen and you die, you are still dead.

Now, what do we know. The CDC and the FDA keep very good records, and we have had testimony and we have asked them this question several times, how many Americans have actually become seriously ill or died from taking FDA-approved drugs from other countries? And it is an easy number to remember. It is a nice round number. The number is zero. Yet we continue to hear these scare tactics.

Scare tactics serve only one purpose, and that is to obscure the facts. The facts, I think, speak for themselves, though, and that is that Americans, because we are a captive market, pay the world's highest prices for drugs, which largely are developed here in the United States and many times paid for by the taxpayers' research dollars. Let us take one drug, perhaps the most effective anti-breast- cancer drug ever developed, Tamoxifen, developed essentially here in the United States with taxpayer dollars.

We invested almost half a billion dollars, taxpayer dollars, developing Tamoxifen, but here is what really chaps my hide. Americans are expected to pay $360 a month for Tamoxifen. That drug can be purchased every day of the week in Germany for $60, as we did, or it can be bought in Canada for $50.

Now, scare tactics are really not about helping Americans understand the facts, because the facts speak for themselves. It is about trying to obscure the facts.

We require in our bill that we begin to develop a process of counterfeit-proof, tamper-proof packaging which will benefit whether the drugs are imported, exported, or made and consumed here in the United States.

This is really about profit over people. It is not about safety, it is not about research, it is about money. It is about big money. We estimate that over the next 10 years, seniors alone, if we open up markets and markets level those prices here in the United States, seniors alone could save over $600 billion. That is with a ``B''. We are talking real money. As my colleague from Oregon earlier said, that could be worth more than this entire prescription drug benefit plan that we are talking about.

Let me tell my colleagues the story of Dr. Wenner from Vermont. Her clinic began to encourage, or at least assist their patients to buy their drugs from

Canada rather than in the United States. They have kept very scrupulous records. So far the records she gave us in testimony, which was sworn testimony before a subcommittee here in the House, was that her patients had been saving 62 percent, and she had seen no adverse reactions to the drugs.

Later this week Members will get a chance to vote on this important matter, and they are going to have to ask themselves, is it really about safety? Is it really about research? Or is it really about putting profit over people?

Ultimately, we are going to have to ask ourselves those questions and we are going to have to defend the answer. Because if a year from now we are still paying $360 for that Tamoxifen and the Germans are paying $60, it is not shame on them, it is shame on us.

Mr. Chairman, I am somewhat hesitant to wade into this debate because I am somewhat new to it, and I want to agree with the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Taylor), and I rise in opposition to this amendment.

He talked about the millions of acres and the millions of dollars. Essentially, if we boil this debate down that we are having right now, the proponents of this amendment are saying the status quo is just fine. Let me tell my colleagues, the status quo is not fine. Let me give my colleagues some of the reasons. Let me give my colleagues some of the reasons why the status quo is not acceptable. It is not about millions of dollars. It is not even about millions of acres of wasted forest. Let me give my colleagues some of the reasons:

Kathi Beck, 24, Eugene, Oregon; Tami Bickett, 25, Powell Butte, Oregon; Scott Blecha, 27, Clatskanie, Oregon; Levi Brinkley, 22, Burns, Oregon; Robert Browning, no age given, of Savannah, Georgia; Doug Dunbar, 23, of Redmond, Oregon; Terri Hagen, 28, Prineville, Oregon; Bonnie Holtby, 21 years old, Prineville, Oregon; Rob Johnson, 26, Redmond, Oregon.

John Kelso, 27, Prineville, Oregon; Don Mackey, 34, Hamilton, Montana; Roger Roth, 30, McCall, Idaho; James Thrash, 44, McCall, Idaho; Richard Tyler, 33, Grand Junction, Colorado.

Those are the young people. Those are the young people who lost their lives in one forest fire. And for people to come to the floor of this House and say the status quo is acceptable, that we can lose 23 forest firefighters in 1 year, 18 the year before, 17 the year before, 86 young people in the last 4 years, I say the status quo is not acceptable. I say we have to move forward with healthy forest management.

For people out in the West, they must be wondering, why does Washington continue to fiddle while our forests burn and our young forest firefighters die? No, Members, the status quo is not acceptable. How many more young people will have to die fighting these fires until we realize that we need real healthy forest management?

It starts today. It starts with our vote on this amendment. Let us reject this amendment. Let us let the Forest Service do what it knows how to do best. Let us get honest plans going for these forests. Let us do it now.

Mr. Speaker, Ronald Reagan used to say that, ``If you say something that's not true, and you don't know it's not true, well, that's a mistake. But when you say something that's not true and you know it's not true, well, that's a lie.''

We have had an awful lot of things that have been said in the last couple of weeks about a bill that I am very involved with in terms of opening up markets so that Americans can have access to world-class drugs at world market prices, and some of the groups have gone over the edge, especially as it relates to tying the issue of abortion to the issue of allowing Americans to have access to cheaper drugs around the world.

I want to read from a letter from one of my heroes, and he is a fellow who served in this House admirably for 6 years. I was privileged to serve with him, Mr. Speaker. Dr. Tom Coburn is an OB-GYN, and he served in Congress for 6 years. He sent a letter to Members of Congress when he heard that the pharmaceutical industry is somehow tying RU-486 to the debate about reimportation of drugs.

Now, Dr. Coburn was one of the most militant advocates and defenders of the sanctity of human life that the Congress has ever seen. He was also a supporter and an author of the bill to open up markets so that Americans could have access to those drugs at fairer prices. He says in his letter, and I will submit the entire letter for the Record, but he says in his letter, and I quote: ``As a pro-life practicing physician who earned a 100 percent pro-life voting record while serving in Congress, I find it ludicrous that those who oppose your legislation would resort to ad hominem attacks with no basis in reality.''

He goes on, and it is a very strong letter. I also want to submit for the Record a letter from our colleagues, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Pitts) and the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Smith), who are very active and co-chairmen of the House Pro-Life Caucus, and they say in their letter, and I will submit it for the Record: ``While we both wish RU-486 were not legal, this debate is not about abortion.''

I want to come back to my original point, that when you say something that is not true and you know it is not true, well, that is a lie. If anyone should know the rules about RU-486, one would think that the people who make the drug would know the rules here in the United States. RU-486 cannot be purchased in the United States of America with a prescription. It cannot be purchased without a prescription. It can only be administered in a doctor's office by a doctor.

In other words, no one can go to a doctor's office and have the doctor write out a prescription to take to the pharmacy and buy the drug. Therefore, nothing that we are talking about in terms of importation of legal FDA-approved drugs from FDA-approved facilities around the world, nothing in that legislation could be impacted by RU- 486 because it cannot be obtained without a prescription. It cannot be obtained with a prescription. More importantly, RU-486 is completely illegal in Canada and Mexico.

So when you say something that is not true and you know it is not true, well, that is a lie. And that is the kind of thing that we have had to deal with in the last several weeks. Now, we in politics are used to puffery. We are used to distortions. We are used to people sometimes saying things that are not completely truthful. We have half- truths. But this is a bald-face lie.

So I come to the floor today to say that people can disagree about whether or not Americans should have to pay the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs, but these groups that oppose this do so for what I believe is clearly a profit motive. In other words, it is the pharmaceutical companies who understand that if we pass this

bill, prescription drug prices in the United States are going to drop dramatically.

I have used examples and I have my charts, and people can argue with my charts, although no one does. The pharmaceutical industry can come in and say, well, it is not true that Americans really have to pay $360 for Tamoxifen while they can buy it for $60 in Germany. Maybe that is true, maybe it is not true; but that is what we found out in the research we did. We bought the drug in Munich, Germany, for $59.05. We called pharmacies here in Washington, D.C. and asked them how much does this particular drug in this particular milligrams, this number of tablets, what does it sell for, and they said it is $360.

Now, maybe we are wrong, but that is an honest mistake. But we believe we are telling the truth, and in everything we have done we have cited our sources. Now, some people have questioned our sources, but they are making up facts that they know are not true. This is not about abortion. It is not about RU-486. The question that we are going to be asked, hopefully next week, is will we stand with American consumers, or will we stand with the giant pharmaceutical industry. I hope we will get the right answer.

Mr. Speaker, I submit for the Record the letters I referred to above:

July 10, 2003.

Hon. Gil Gutknecht,

Cannon House Office Building,

Washington, DC.

Dear Gil. I was shocked to learn that some opponents of

free-market access for prescription drugs have begun arguing

that your legislation, H.R. 2427, the ``Pharmaceutical Market

Access Act of 2003'' somehow promotes abortion and, more

specifically, the availability of abortion drugs such as RU-

486.

As you may recall, while in the House I was the author of

not only provisions to permit the reimportation of FDA-

approved drugs, but also the author of the House-approved

proposal to block FDA-approval of RU-486. As a pro-life

practicing physician who earned a 100 percent pro-life voting

record while serving in Congress, I find it ludicrous that

those who oppose your legislation would resort to ad hominem

attacks with no basis in reality.

I can state unequivocally that your legislation in no way,

shape, or form promotes abortion. Many pro-life members are

original cosponsors of your legislation and, quite obviously,

do not believe your bill violates their deeply held

convictions about the sanctity of life. Those who argue that

your legislation makes abortion drugs more accessible by

lowering overall drug prices necessitate the conclusion that

in order to be pro-life one must be in favor of increasing

all drug costs. I suppose the argument would be the higher

the drug costs the more fervent your pro-life beliefs.

In Washington, it was always sad to see organizations drift

from their core principles and take positions that defined

common sense and logic. Any organization that links your

legislation with the abortion debate will, in the long-term

undermine their credibility and relevancy in Washington.

While the pharmaceutical industry has provided many wonderful

saving drugs, it would be unwise for anyone to believe that

the industry that developed and fought for FDA approval of

RU-486 is now motivated by a passion for the pro-life cause.

The fact that opponents of your legislation have resorted

to these attacks is shameful, yet the obtuseness of their

logic ultimately serves to highlight the soundness of your

argument.

Sincerely yours,

Tom A. Coburn, M.D.

Former Member of Congress.

Mr. Speaker, I come to the floor of the House tonight again to talk about the issue of prescription drugs and the prices that Americans pay compared to the prices that people pay in the rest of the industrialized world. I will have colleagues joining me tonight from time to time from both sides of the political aisle. We have Republicans, we have Democrats, we have people who would consider themselves conservative and, hopefully, some who will be coming down who consider themselves to be liberals or progressives.

Because this is not an issue of right versus left. It is an issue of right versus wrong. Tomorrow night we hope to do another Special Order on a bipartisan basis to talk about this issue again, because I think this is the kind of issue that we need to talk about, that Members need to understand.

Mr. Speaker, I, in the past, have said that the fact that Americans pay so much more than the people in Canada or in Germany or Switzerland or France, I have always said that it is not so much shame on the pharmaceutical industry, it is shame on us. And it is really our responsibility. Our own FDA works for the Congress and not the other way around.

But, tonight, my tone is going to start to change because of some of the things that the pharmaceutical industry has been doing over the last several weeks.

President Reagan said, if you tell something that is not true but you do not know it is not true, that is a mistake. If you say something that is not true and you know it is not true, that is a lie. And in the last several weeks we have seen things that really do border on lies, because the people who are telling the stories know that they are not true. We are going to talk about that tonight.

I want to thank my colleague, the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Emanuel), for joining me tonight in this Special Order. I know that he has had an incredibly long day and he can only stay for a few minutes, so I would like to yield to him so that he can talk about the issue and the problem and what we in Congress maybe can do to bring some parity and fairness in terms of the prices that our consumers are forced to pay for these life-saving drugs.

Mr. Speaker, we have plenty of examples. Before the gentleman goes, one of the issues that I briefly referenced in my opening remarks was that up until the last several days I have been very hesitant to criticize the pharmaceutical industry because in many respects they did not create this system; Congress did. They did not allow this system to perpetuate. It was the FDA and the Congress that did. But recently they have begun what I think is an unethical strategy to try and scare seniors, to scare consumers, to begin to get them to believe that the problems that would be created by this legislation are insurmountable.

And to the gentleman's credit, the gentleman has had the courage to fight back. Because they have started to run ads on radio, they started to do mailings to our seniors, they are making phone calls to our seniors, they are mailing to pro-life groups; and that is where I get back to this point. If you tell something that is not true and you know it is not true, that is a lie. And I think sometimes here in this city we have to call an untruth a lie. And to the gentleman's credit, and I want the gentleman to talk a little bit about what he has done in Chicago to begin to call things the way they really are and to counterattack. And I admire the gentleman for that. Perhaps the gentleman can talk a little bit about what has been happening in Chicago, in the gentleman's district, and what he is doing about it.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman. We have sort of suffered the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune over this issue, but it is worth it because this is a big issue. The gentleman mentioned they are desperate. They understand what we understand, that over the next 10 years this is a $630 billion issue. And that $630 billion is going to be paid by seniors, it is going to be paid by families, it is going to be paid by big businesses, it is going to be paid by small businesses; but that is $630 billion that Americans should not have to pay.

As we talked about with many of these drugs like Tamoxifen, the Americans already paid for the drug. We paid to develop the drug. And yet they sell it, here this box of drugs I bought in Munich, Germany, for $59.05. We rounded it off to $60. This drug sells here in Washington, D.C. for $360. That is outrageous. It is indefensible. And the reason that they have to resort to distortions, deceptions, and down right lies is because they cannot defend this chart. They cannot defend the fact that Cipro sells in Germany for $35 and $55 in the United States, that Coumadin sells for $21 in Germany and $89.95 in the United States. Glucophage, $21.95 in the United States, only $5 in Germany. Pravachol sells for $62.96 in Germany but $149.95 here, and the list goes on.

The gentleman said the total price for the 10 most commonly prescribed drugs, $373.30 in Munich, Germany. That same group of drugs, same quantities, made in the same FDA-approved facilities sells for $1,039.65 here in the United States. That is indefensible. They do not want to argue this chart. They do not want to argue these numbers, so they resorted to the only thing that is left, and that is to try to scare seniors, try to deceive Members of Congress and somehow distort this whole issue so that it is about safety, it is about abortion, it is about all other kinds of issues; but that is not what it is about.

It is about money. It is about real money. Because they believe that $630 billion belongs to them. We believe that $630 billion belongs to Americans.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Hoekstra).

That must be for 100 tablets. Does it say?

That is what we are talking about.

Mr. Speaker, I want to give our friend from Illinois a few minutes because I know he has to leave.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman; and hopefully tonight we are going to have another bipartisan opportunity to come together, Republicans, Democrats, Independents, conservatives, liberals, and talk about this.

Let me just share, I have a lot of heroes. We all have heroes, but I want to talk about one in particular. Her name is Kate Stahl. Kate Stahl is 84 years old. She is a very active member of the Senior Federation back in Minnesota, and she was quoted in a recent copy of U.S. News and World Report, and the quote is, I would like nothing better than to be thrown in jail.

She is a self-described drug runner. She helps people find affordable medications, in Canada principally, but she will also look other places. She goes on-line. She helps them buy drugs. She takes them up to Winnipeg to buy drugs. Kate Stahl is not a common criminal. She is an American hero.

One of the statistics I have come across and one of the reasons I fight so aggressively on this issue, there was a study done recently by the Kaiser Foundation, and I checked this out because I spoke to the community pharmacists a few months ago. The study said that 29 percent of seniors say that they have had prescriptions that have gone unfilled because they could not afford them.

So when I spoke to the community pharmacists a couple of months ago, I asked them the question, have you ever had the experience where a senior comes in, or it does not even have to be a senior, it can be a mother or father comes in with a prescription, hands it to you and you tell them how much the prescription is going to cost and they take a deep breath and they drop their head and they say, well, maybe I will be back tomorrow and they never come back? Shame on us. Shame on us.

These drugs are available today in other industrialized countries for a fraction of what we pay, but they have something we do not have. They have parallel marketing or parallel trading in Europe, and they allow the pharmacists to literally shop where they can get the best price, whether it is for Coumadin or Synthroid or whatever it happens to be, and, as a result, they have affordable drugs.

It really is time for us to open up markets, because markets work. Again quoting Ronald Reagan, ``Markets are more powerful than armies.'' We have to open up markets. We have to have some competition. And if we do that, we will have more affordable prescription drugs, not just for seniors but for moms and dads, families, and for small businesses.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back to my friend from Michigan because he has been a champion of small businesses, and particularly a champion for small businesses. He has seen what is happening to manufacturing and one of the reasons for the cost of health care. Perhaps he wants to talk a little about why this does matter whether you are a senior citizen or a manager of a small manufacturing plant.

Reclaiming my time, Mr. Speaker, the gentleman is absolutely correct. I have been astonished at the response by some of the people here in Washington. We all claim to be very concerned with the fact that we have lost over 2 million manufacturing jobs in the last 4 years; and some people are saying, well, the answer is more government programs; and some people say, well, the answer is tax cuts. But here is an idea that if we are right, and I think we are, and I think the evidence supports this, that we can save at least $630 billion.

Now, if you want to allow Americans to keep and spend $630 billion of their money, here is a good place to start; and it does not cost the Federal Treasury a dime. It just begins to equalize, so no longer will American consumers and American taxpayers be subsidizing the health care cost of the rest of the world.

And I just want to come back to one point, because people do not realize, and the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Emanuel) started talking about this, we subsidize the pharmaceutical industry in three separate ways. First of all, we subsidize them in the tax codes because they get very generous tax benefits for what they do on research and so forth. They get to write off at least 50 percent. In many cases, they get a dollar-per-dollar tax reduction in the form of tax credits.

Secondly, we subsidize them in the amount we spend on research. This year, and I am proud of this fact, we will spend about $27 billion in taxpayers' dollars through the NIH, the National Science Foundation, actually through the Defense Department. We spend an awful lot of money on research which ultimately benefits the pharmaceutical industry. With the drug tax laws, for example, we spent almost $.5 billion taxpayer dollars developing Paxil. Then we licensed that

drug to a pharmaceutical company and they went out and sold $9 billion worth of Paxil to the market. Even though we took it all the way through phase 2 trials at taxpayer expense, they have sold $9 billion and they paid us a royalty of $35 million.

Finally, we subsidize the pharmaceutical companies in the prices we pay. As the gentleman said, I think we ought to subsidize the people in sub-Saharan Africa, but I think the time has come to say we will no longer continue to subsidize the starving Swiss.

And we should do something about it.

Mr. Speaker, we have been joined by our friend, the gentleman from Vermont, someone who has been in these trenches fighting this battle I think for even longer than I have.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Vermont.

Well, if the gentleman will yield back, that is the question I asked my colleagues and that is how I got involved in this debate. I always tell people I feel like the little boy who came in and asked his mother a question, and his mother was busy. She said go ask your dad. And he said, well, I did not want to know that much about it.

The more I have learned about this, the more pernicious this thing is. But what really got me involved was several years ago on behalf of my pork producers, when the price of hogs dropped from about 37 cents a pound down to about 9 cents a pound, 8 cents a pound, my hog producers started calling me saying, Congressman, can you not do something about this? I said, I do not know what I can do. They said, at least can you stop the Canadian hogs from coming into the American market making our situation even worse, making the supply and demand thing even worse? Can you do something about the Canadian hogs, at least stop them?

So I called the Secretary of Agriculture and I called the Secretary of Commerce and I got essentially the same answer. They said, well, that is called NAFTA. It is called free trade. All of a sudden a light bulb went on above my head. I said, wait a minute, we have free trade when it comes to pork bellies and blueberries, but we do not have free trade when it comes to Tamoxifen? The one area where Americans could save billions.

Billions. And that is when I began to move. As Winston Churchill once said, ``The difference between a fan and a fanatic is, a fanatic is one who cannot change their mind and will not change the subject.'' I have become a fanatic on this, and we will not step down.

Mr. Speaker, coming back to the abortion piece, if anybody knows what the rules are on the drug RU-486, it is the drug companies that make it. We talk about Canada and Mexico, we do not even mention Mexico in our legislation because we only talk about industrialized countries. We mention only the G-8 countries, countries that we know have very sophisticated methods of regulating the drugs. But let us come back to RU-486. That is what they are going after with some of the pro-lifers with that mailer. Here is what they know.

Exactly. It is all funded by the pharmaceutical companies. We know that, and we will be able to prove that within the next 72 hours.

But let me come back to this point. They know the rules. You cannot get the abortion drug RU-486 with a prescription in the United States. You can only get it administered by a doctor in a hospital or in the doctor's office. In other words, he or she cannot write you a prescription and you get it filled at the pharmacy.

The pharmaceutical industry knows that, and that is why this is such a bald-faced lie. In fact, they do not even go so far as to say you cannot even get it legally in Canada or Mexico. It is outlawed completely in those countries. Only the FDA has allowed the abortion drug.

I do not think they should, but whichever side of the story you are on, stick to the facts. And if anybody knows the facts, it is the companies that produce it. It is not laughable. It is sad. I used to think of them as an ethical industry. No more. It is unethical. What they are doing is dishonest, and they deserve all of the spite that the consumers are beginning to heap upon their shoulders.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Vermont (Mr. Sanders).

Mr. Speaker, we have had a very lively discussion. This is an important debate. Ultimately, it is about hundreds of billions of dollars that Americans pay and will be forced to pay if we do not do something about it. There is nothing in it for any of us except the satisfaction of doing what we believe is honestly right.

I will close with the words of the American philosopher and country western singer Tom Petty, ``We won't back down.''