Sherrod Brown

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 3075, but I rise with a great deal of disappointment that this bill falls far, far short of what this House should do. Today we are not considering prescription drug coverage when 75 percent of our elderly have inadequate or nonexistent prescription drug coverage. We are not modernizing Medicare. We are not repealing therapy caps, caps which have harmed thousands of our elderly. Too many seniors are spending into poverty to pay for prescription drugs. Yet, all the majority is doing is tinkering at the edges of the Medicare payment system. When is this Congress going to get serious about modernizing Medicare? When is this Congress going to take action based on the best interests of Medicare enrollees? When is this Congress going to get serious about the Patients' Bill of Rights? And when is this Congress going to provide prescription drugs for this Nation's elderly? If Republicans remain in the majority, Mr. Speaker, the answer unfortunately is do not hold your breath.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Speaker, no one from the Ways and Means majority has answered why they voted against prescription drug discounts. We have legislation before this Congress to cut the cost of prescription drugs. Yet Republicans will not give us a vote or allow us to debate on the floor any of the legislation we have to provide discounts while Americans pay two times and three times and four times for prescription drugs what people in other countries pay. Remember, 50 percent of all research and development for prescription drugs in this country is paid for by taxpayers. Yet American consumers, America's elderly pay twice as much or three times as much as consumers all over the world in England and France and everywhere else in the world. This bill is okay, Mr. Speaker. We help providers. But most importantly, we should pass a patients' bill of rights. We should pass prescription drug coverage and prescription drug discounts for America's seniors.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Green), a fellow member of the Subcommittee on Health. (Mr. GREEN of Texas asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, most Americans and, for that matter, most Members of Congress probably have not perhaps until recently heard of Falun Gong. I had never heard of it until last summer, when the People's Republic of China banned it and started throwing thousands of people in jail for practicing their faith. It is hardly surprising, Mr. Speaker, that China systematically is arresting and torturing and even killing its own citizens for practicing Falun Gong. After all, this is the same gang of dictators that persecutes Christians, that tolerates, maybe even encourages, forced abortions, the exact same regime that had the People's Liberation Army crush hundreds of democracy advocates 10 years ago at Tiananmen Square in Beijing. But even though this latest purge is completely in character, it is a perfect illustration of the fact that 10 years of giving the Chinese government trading privileges with the United States, giving them most- favored-nation status, still has not brought about the rule of law in China. I cannot recall ever seeing less respect for human life, nor do I think there is better evidence to contradict the incessant drum beat from corporate America and the Republican allies in Congress that free trade is the magic bean that is going to sprout democracy in China. There is simply no evidence for that, because when Beijing decided to make practicing Falun Gong a capital offense, which is exactly what the rubber-stamped Chinese Congress did last week, we see that life in the People's Republic of China is exactly the same as it was before American CEOs streamed into Shanghai last month to celebrate 50 years of communism. Topping off this event was a presentation by one major American CEO of a bust of Abraham Lincoln to Chinese President Jiang Zemin. Regardless of what the business community or the lawyers at the Commerce Department or their Republican allies tell us, our trade with China is completely one-sided. Just look at our trade deficit figures and tell any of us otherwise. Walk into a Wal-Mart, count the number of items that are stamped ``made in China,'' and you can see the picture. If you are still not convinced, then read the administration's own report on the effects of a WTO deal with China on our economy. That report tells us that even under the best possible circumstances, which might mean that the totalitarian government actually lives up to the promises they made any time in the last 10 years to our government, even under those circumstances, the best of circumstances, our exports to China would barely increase and our trade deficit, even under the best of circumstances, would continue to balloon out of control. Mr. Speaker, this not a report by a college student or a Washington think tank, this is a determination of our own International Trade Commission. These are the men and women that our constituents pay to analyze just what kind of deal we are getting from letting China dump its goods here, from letting it keep our goods and services out of their market. The men and women of the ITC are telling us that a WTO deal for China could not help our economy any more than a WTO deal for Mars would help stop the factory closings or help sell American cars or help sell American planes to China's 1 billion consumers. That is because there are not really 1 billion consumers in the People's Republic of China. That is not how corporations of the United States look at China. There are 1 billion potential low-wage workers. That is what excites American corporations. The average person in China makes less than $800 a year, and we are supposed to believe they are going to buy our products. Even the ITC has concluded that that is a preposterous assumption. Mr. Speaker, before we close one more factory, before we permit one more forced abortion in China, before we allow China to continue to operate its slave labor and child labor camps and sell goods to the United States, we need to stop kidding ourselves and get out of the business of trading with dictators, because as I speak, there are thousands of men and women in China who are being beaten and killed for choosing to believe in ideals that we take for granted in this country, ideals from Abraham Lincoln that Jiang Zemin really does not admire, clearly, whether it is our faith in God, our right to vote, or simply wanting to go on an early morning jog. I urge all of my colleagues to protest and oppose any more trading privileges with the People's Republic of China until its government proves it actually is capable of respecting law.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding time to me. Mr. Speaker, today we call upon the conferees for H.R. 2990 to insist on the House-passed version of the Patients' Bill of Rights. That is the portion of H.R. 2990 that reminds health insurers that if they want to get paid, they must actually provide a meaningful health insurance product, not a cheap imitation. The Senate-passed bill may accomplish many things. It leaves out most Americans from coverage under the Patients' Bill of Rights. It may appease the insurance industry. It may provide cover for politicians who want to appear responsive to their constituents, when in fact they are too often catering to insurance industry lobbyists. What the Senate bill does not do is the one thing it is supposed to do. It does not ensure that employers and employees get what they pay for when they purchase insurance. In fact, there are HMO fingerprints all over the Senate version of the Patients' Bill of Rights. Pivotal reforms like the right to see a doctor outside the HMO network and the right to sue when a health plan acts in bad faith are simply missing. Other reforms have been watered down to such an extent that patients may be no better off with them than without them. Can anyone in this Chamber honestly say that that is what the public had in mind when it called for a Patients' Bill of Rights? If we ask the insurance industry which bill it prefers, there is no contest. The Senate bill would win. Managed care organizations take huge gambles, gambles they perceive as benign business decisions, with potentially harmful or even fatal consequences for their enrollees. I join my colleague, the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Dingell), in urging the conferees to act in the best interests of the public and insist on the House-passed version of the Patients' Bill of Rights.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, many of us have come to the House floor one after another talking about lowering the high cost of prescription drugs, especially for the elderly and underinsured. Unfortunately, Republicans have simply refused to join Democrats to fight the drug companies and reduce these high prices and help protect public health. Let us look at the numbers. More than 75 percent of Medicare beneficiaries have no coverage or inadequate MediGap coverage for prescription drugs. At least one-third of Medicare beneficiaries have no drug coverage at all. Forty-four million Americans do not have health insurance. That means they also, obviously, do not have coverage to help pay the high cost of prescription drugs. Meanwhile, drug companies charge Americans higher prices, in many cases twice as high, sometimes three times, four times, five times as high, compared to prices paid by the citizens of any other industrialized Nation. An average dosage, 60 tablets of Zocor for high cholesterol, costs $44 in Canada and $102 in the United States. One month's supply of Tamoxifen for breast cancer sells for $156 in the United States and only $12 in Canada. The drug industry repeatedly tells the American people that any reduction in prices will cause them to dramatically curtail and cut back their research and development efforts. It is difficult for some of us to take these threats seriously. Who pays for a majority of research and development costs for new drugs in the United States, anyway? The answer is American taxpayers. The fact is Congress, where the drug industry's multi-million dollar lobbying campaign and operation has such great influence, has granted this industry enormous tax breaks for research and development. At the same time, the National Institutes of Health and non- governmental research organizations fund more than half of all research and development for drug companies without charge. Then drug companies take the information they patented and they market another new and very lucrative miracle drug to Americans, and charge them the highest prices in the world. It is no secret what is going on here. Drug companies simply are doing what they need to do to maximize profits. Unlike every other industrialized nation in the world, the U.S. does not in any way tamper with or regulate drug prices. What is the effect? Drug companies charge us the highest prices of any country in the world by multiples of two, three, and even four times what other countries pay. Who are the victims? The victims are always those with the least bargaining power: those without insurance, those who are elderly, those who are poorest. From a market perspective, what the drug companies are doing is appropriate. They are maximizing their profits. That is their job. It is equally appropriate that Democrats in Congress are taking the lead in protecting seniors and the uninsured, and to address the ramifications of what drug companies are doing to the disadvantaged. That is our job. Understand, again, 50 percent of all research and development costs for the research and development of new drugs in this country are paid for by taxpayers. Understand also that Congress has bestowed on those drug companies generous tax breaks on the money they do spend on research and development. Then understand that drug companies show their appreciation to American taxpayers by charging us two and three and four times what citizens of every other country in the world pay. How can we lower prescription drug costs? We can lower prices through competition. I have introduced a bill that would permit competitors, that would permit generic companies to enter the market for drugs when they are unreasonably priced, whether the drug's patent has expired or not. The patent-holder would receive royalties for being the first on the market. Generic companies would compete with them, and Americans would receive a price break fueled by competition. The bill would require drug companies to publicly disclose audited information justifying the prices that they do charge. I urge my Republican colleagues to stop stonewalling. I urge them to join Democrats in lowering the cost of prescription drugs. Let us act before it is too late.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, next month, the world's power brokers are going to meet in Seattle so they can kick off a new round of trade talks for the World Trade Organization. Although one will not learn much about the WTO summit from television news casters or read about it on the front pages of newspapers, there are few events this year that will be more important to workers in Ohio and around the world. While the WTO corporate supporters and allies in Washington see the Seattle negotiations as a fresh opportunity to completely deregulate the international economy, the truth is that their agenda has systematically gutted our worker, consumer, and environmental protections that we have fought for in this body, and deliberately usurped the rights of individual nations to make their own laws, especially when those laws protect the environment and especially when those laws protect workers. Mr. Speaker, a report ``Whose Trade Organization,'' written by Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch dramatically demonstrates why the WTO requires fundamental change before the bureaucrats in Seattle take us down another road of trade negotiations. When Congress approved the World Trade Organization and other agreements, like NAFTA, we essentially ceded our authority to independently advance health and safety standards that protect America's families. Let me say that again. Thanks to the WTO and to NAFTA and other trade agreements, we are losing our ability to protect the health and the well-being of the men and women that voted us into office. That is because we have to ensure that we are not violating some bureaucrat's view of what constitutes a trade barrier or what constitutes a legitimate health concern. None of the lawyers, Mr. Speaker, from the U.S. Trade Representative's office or the Commerce Department or their supporters on Wall Street has been elected to office. Yet these are the very people that will represent us in Seattle, the people that will weaken our ability to erect meaningful worker and environmental standards. Their fascination with a healthy bottom line is how we wind up with trade agreements that give more rights to corporations and their stockholders than they do to individual citizens and to our elected governments. That is how we wind up giving unelected bureaucrats the authority to determine whether or not our consumers have to eat foods that have been treated with carcinogenic pesticides or whether or not we have to drink water that tastes vaguely like paint thinner. That is what is happening right now in California. The governor has banned the gasoline additive MTBE because it is leaking into the drinking water. The Canadian corporation that makes it is using NAFTA to sue the United States for nearly $1 billion because they think this constitutes a trade barrier. Think about that. A foreign corporation is asking our taxpayers to give it $1 billion because the people in California do not like the taste of paint thinner in their drinking water and think it is good public health to ban this gasoline additive. This case is just one of the dozens that are included in this book I mentioned which meticulously documents how every single health safety or environmental law reviewed by the WTO has been declared an illegal trade barrier that must be eliminated under the threat of sanctions. In addition to these cases, Public Citizen documents that much of the WTO's damage is done merely by threatening the use of its powerful dispute system, a fact evidenced by the increasing number of countries that are preemptively eliminating their environmental or health laws just to avoid the steep political and fiscal costs involved in defending a law from a WTO challenge. Mr. Speaker, if we want to preserve American jobs, if we want to continue protecting our environment, we need to make sure that negotiators in Seattle, U.S. taxpayer financed negotiators in Seattle, respect the principles that let us stand here during this debate tonight. Rather than letting unelected officials from the Trade Rep's office or their friends on Wall Street tell us what is good for America, we need to make sure they hear what our constituents want. Every weekend that I go home to Ohio, they tell me they do not want to eat contaminated strawberries; they tell me they do not want to drink unsafe water. They do not want to lose their jobs because the WTO does not care whether some foreign workers, no older, sometimes, than the age of 13 or 14, or that work 18 hours a day for what amounts to less than a dollar an hour, that WTO does not care whether workers like that are taking American jobs and being exploited in developing countries. Mr. Speaker, it is vital that we in Congress, that the American people, realize what is at stake when the world's largest assembly of millionaires meets in Seattle this year. We have to keep fighting to make labor standards, environmental standards, and human rights as important to our trade bureaucrats as intellectual property rights.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Madam Speaker, I joined the President and Health and Human Services Secretary Shalala today at the White House to call on Congress to approve a prescription drug benefit in Medicare. We also called on private health plans to continue providing coverage for medicine that doctors prescribe. The problem is twofold. Millions of Americans, young and old, cannot afford the high costs of prescription drugs. And the majority in Congress refuse to lift a finger to reduce these prices and help protect public health. Unlike other industrialized nations, the U.S. does not regulate drug prices. So drug companies charge us the highest prices of any nation by multiples of two and three and even four times what citizens in other countries pay. Within the United States, drug companies are charging the highest prices to those with the least bargaining power, the elderly and those without health insurance. Drug companies are diverting also huge sums of money, money that comes from inflated drug prices, into advertising. From a market perspective, drug companies are doing everything they should be doing. We cannot blame drug companies for maximizing their profits. They make more money than any other industry in America. That is their job. Nor can we blame the President and many of us in Congress for taking steps to protect seniors and the uninsured and to address the ramifications of what drug companies are doing to the disadvantaged. That is our job. I have introduced an initiative that would bring down prices without taking away the industry's incentive to act like an industry. My bill promotes good old-fashioned American competition. The Affordable Prescription Drug Act, H.R. 2927, does not use price controls or regulations to bring down prescription drug prices. What my bill does is reduce drug industry power and increase consumer power by subjecting the drug industry to the same competitive forces that other industries bear. It is a means of moderating prices that are too high without inadvertently setting prices too low. Drawing from intellectual property laws already in place in the U.S. for other products in which access is an issue, pollution control devices as one example, legislation would establish product licensing for essential prescription drugs. If a drug price is so outrageously high that it bears no semblance to pricing norms for other industries, the Federal Government could require drug manufacturers to license their patent to generic drug companies. The generic companies could sell competing products before the brand name expires, paying the patentholder royalties for that right. The patentholder would still be amply rewarded for being the first on the market, and Americans would benefit from competitively driven prices. Alternatively, a drug company could lower voluntarily their price, which would preclude the Government from finding cause for product licensing. Either way, Madam Speaker, the price of prescription drugs would go down. The bill requires drug companies to provide audited, detailed information on drug company expenses. Given that these companies are asking us to accept a status quo that has bankrupt seniors and fueled health care inflation, they have kept us guessing about their true cost for far too long. We can continue to buy into drug industry threats that R&D will dry up unless we continue to shelter them from competition. That argument, however, Madam Speaker, falls apart when we look at how R&D is funded today. Long story short, most of research and development dollars are provided by U.S. taxpayers. Get this: fifty percent of all the research and development for drug development in this country are paid for by taxpayers and the National Institutes of Health and other Federal and State agencies; and of the 50 percent that drug companies actually spend, they get tax deductions from Congress for that. Yet, prescription drug companies reward American taxpayers by charging Americans consumers two times, three times, four times the price for prescription drugs that people in other countries pay. Madam Speaker, we can do nothing in this body, or we can dare to challenge the drug industry on behalf of seniors and every health care consumer in this country. I urge my colleagues to support lowering the cost of prescription drugs.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 3 minutes. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of H.R. 754, the Made in America Information Act. This legislation, introduced by my colleague, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Traficant), is an important step in reversing the damage that unfairly priced imports are wreaking on workers and small businesses in this country. It is supported by three of my Democratic colleagues on the Committee on Commerce as cosponsors, the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Barrett), the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone), and the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Green). Mr. Speaker, regardless of what mainstream economists say, regardless of what the media and talk show hosts say, the fact is there is no greater long-term threat to our economic prosperity than our ballooning trade deficit. Just ask the millions of American workers and small businesses that every month are being asked to compete against billions of dollars of goods that roll onto our shores, many of them made in places where trying to form a union or fight for environmental standards will land a person in jail. In other cases, some of our workers and small businesses are competing against goods that masquerade as American made, especially those from Saipan, where we know that U.S. corporations exploit tens of thousands of, mostly, young women, and most with families in China, and force them to make garments for pennies an hour. We know this happens because of the efforts of their employers on Wall Street and their political allies here in Washington who continue to block our efforts to even give those very young women the minimum wage or provide the working conditions that we give to American teenagers working at a McDonald's. Mr. Speaker, the premise behind H.R. 754 is very simple. It requires the Commerce Department to establish a toll-free telephone hot line to give the American public, the men and women who vote and pay our salaries, help in determining if the products they are buying are, in fact, made by American workers. This hot line will take the guesswork out of whether or not a product that claims to be made in America is really made here or, conversely, assembled in a sweat shop in Saipan or somewhere else. Only those products that meet the Federal Trade Commission standard for making a claim that its product is made in the USA are eligible to be listed on the registry, which the Commerce Department will use to identify American-made products for consumers. Mr. Speaker, I would also note that, except for minor differences, H.R. 754 is the same legislation that has passed this Congress in each of the last three sessions. Unfortunately, the other body has never taken action on it, and the bill has not been enacted. I sincerely hope that will not be the situation in this Congress and that the bill finally can be enacted into law. Mr. Speaker, I again want to thank the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Traficant) for this legislation and urge my colleagues to support H.R. 754 and stop sacrificing fair trade on the alter of free trade. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for time, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from California (Mr. Matsui) for yielding this time to me. Mr. Speaker, if we can help disabled individuals reenter and stay in the work force, we should do that. It clearly makes sense from a fiscal perspective, and it exemplifies our values as a Nation. I plan to vote for H.R. 1180 for one reason and one reason only. The programs it establishes are in the best interests of disabled individuals and the Nation. However, it is important for us to recognize that this bill is not the same as the one 279 Members of this body cosponsored. It started out stronger, but that was before Members less dedicated to the policy and more dedicated to the politics of this bill got hold of it. Republican members of the Committee on Ways and Means got a hold of the original bill. As a result, we are being asked to consider without amendment a weak alternative to a strong bill. For political reasons rather than policy reasons we are only partially funding H.R. 1180. The Ways and Means majority ignored committee jurisdiction to include Medicaid offsets in H.R. 1180, then refused to cooperate on a noncontroversial offset for which the Committee on Commerce has primary jurisdiction. Apparently some Committee on Ways and Means members' feathers were ruffled that the Committee on Commerce would even suggest the Medicare part B offset. Somehow they felt justified in claiming the Committee on Commerce had overstepped our jurisdiction. In fact, of the two committees, the Committee on Commerce is the one that did not attempt to overstep its jurisdiction. Republican Ways and Means leadership claims the administration refused to lift a finger to help find offsets for this bill. I was there. I can assure my colleagues that this assertion is patently false. As a matter of fact, the administration helped us identify the very offset that the Committee on Ways and Means refused to accept. Basically, the Committee on Ways and Means majority leadership broke the rules to fund the pieces of the bill they liked and co-opted the rules in attempt to kill the sections of the bill they did not like, and none of their actions reflects what is best for the disabled community or for American taxpayers. The original Work Incentive Act that passed out of the Committee on Commerce has well over a majority of Members of this body sponsoring it. H.R. 1180 funds Medicare and Medicaid options for disabled individuals who want to return to work. It funds a demonstration program, the goal of which is to prevent disabled individuals from being forced to leave a job because of a degenerative illness. Ignoring for a moment what our values as a Nation say about supporting the effort to contribute to society, let us talk dollars and cents. The work incentives bill enables disabled individuals to work instead of being dependent on cash assistance. The effect of the bill is to reduce the cost of cash assistance programs. Knowing they will have health insurance should they return to work, disabled people would not need to remain dependent on cash assistance. We should be considering full funding for H.R. 1180, which means we should be considering the Commerce bill. Finally, Mr. Speaker, I want to address the issue of offsets. The majority cited the fact that offsets have not been agreed upon as a justification for weakening this bill. I have to say that concerns raised by the majority are more than a little ironic given their arbitrary application of pay-as-you-go rules. The $792 billion tax cut bill had no offsets nor did the $48 billion tax cut for buying health insurance. Both bills are touted as helping one population, but in reality, help another. The tax bill ostensibly would provide the bulk of the tax cut to those Americans who make up the majority of the population and happen to need the money; that is, to low- and middle-income families. Simply not so. The access bill ostensibly would expand access to those most likely to be uninsured and least able to afford coverage. Again, not so. These bills generally skip over those in need of help and help those with influence. In contrast, the Work Incentives Act which we know would actually help the intended beneficiaries, people with disabilities, apparently has been slashed by the Committee on Ways and Means for the lack of considerably fewer dollars in offsets. Apparently, there is one set of rules for bills that aid Americans with money and power and another set of rules for those bills that help the less fortunate. Mr. Speaker, I am going to vote for this bill. I expect and hope a majority of our colleagues will vote for this bill, but I hope those who underfunded this version of H.R. 1180 will reconsider and work with us in conference to achieve the strongest bill possible.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I object to the vote on the ground that a quorum is not present and make the point of order that a quorum is not present.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to tell two stories, one of success, and one of failure. In August, the Education Department awarded a grant to a local coalition dedicated to helping students in Lorain, Ohio, go to college. The grant is part of the Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs, or GEAR-UP. Lorain County has a large number of low-income students and the lowest incidence of postsecondary education in northeast Ohio. The GEAR-UP program provides training and materials to volunteer mentors from local industry and universities. These positive role models will meet with students early, before they internalize negative messages. The program intends to motivate students to ask for, and answer to, increased academic demand. But here is where we risk failure. Funding for GEAR-UP is eliminated in the current Labor-HHS appropriations bill. Why? Because GEAR-UP supports public-private partnerships to support local students? Because it creates dollar-for-dollar matches between local partnerships and States? Because it provides college scholarships to reinforce the message that hard work begets opportunity? Mr. Speaker, let us make sure our failure does not deter students from future successes before they have a chance to begin. Let us fund the GEAR-UP program.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, many of us in this institution have been highly critical of the American pharmaceutical industry. Maybe, maybe we have been a bit too harsh. From a market perspective, drug companies are doing everything they should be doing. We cannot blame drug companies for maximizing their profits. That is their job. Nor can we blame the Federal Government for taking steps to protect seniors and the uninsured and to address the ramifications of what drug companies are doing to the disadvantaged. That is our job. To address this issue, I have introduced H.R. 2927 to bring down prices without taking away the industry's incentive to act like an industry. My bill promotes good, old-fashioned American competition. The Affordable Prescription Drug Act does not use price controls, does not use regulations to bring down prescription drug prices. What my bill does is reduce drug industry power and increase consumer power by subjecting the drug industry to the same competitive forces that other industries bear. It is a means of moderating prices that are too high without inadvertently setting prices that are too low. Drawing from intellectual property laws already in place for the U.S. for other products in which access is an issue, pollution control devices come to mind, the legislation would establish product licenses for essential prescription drugs. If, based on criteria published by the Department of Commerce, a drug price is so outrageously high that it bears no semblance to pricing norms for other industries, the Federal Government could require drug manufacturers to license their patent to generic drug companies. The generic drug companies could then sell competing products before the brand name patent expires, paying the patent holder royalties for that right. The patent holder would still be amply rewarded for being the first on the market, and Americans would benefit from competitively driven prices. Alternatively, a drug company could voluntarily lower its prices, which would preclude the Federal Government from being involved, from finding cause for product licensing. Either way, prescription drug prices come down. The bill requires drug companies to provide audited, detailed information on drug company expenses. Given that these companies are repeatedly asking us to accept a status quo that is bankrupting seniors and fueling health care inflation, they have kept us guessing about their true costs for far too long. We can continue to buy into drug industry threats that research and development will dry up unless we continue to shelter them from competition. The argument, however, Mr. Speaker, falls apart when we actually look at how R&D is funded today. Long story short, it is mostly funded by American taxpayers. Fifty percent of research and development for new drugs in this country is done by the Federal Government, by local governments and by foundations. The other 50 percent that the drug company spends, the Federal Government, Congress, has bestowed tax breaks on those companies for those dollars they do spend. The drug companies turn around and thank U.S. consumers by charging us two times, three times, four times what consumers in other countries pay. We pay for half the research. We give tax breaks on the dollars they do spend. They turn around and charge American consumers twice or three times what consumers of prescription drugs pay in every other country in the world. Mr. Speaker, we can do nothing or we can dare to challenge the drug industry on behalf of seniors and every health care consumer in this country. We should take a serious look at the Allen bill, the Berry- Sanders bill, the Brown bill. There is no excuse for inaction. I urge my colleagues to support lowering the cost of prescription medicine. Let us act responsibly before it is too late.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I reserve my time.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Speaker, again I would like to commend the authors of the bill, the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee) and the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Upton) and especially the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Stupak), who pointed out in committee and on the floor that this legislation, aimed at getting GHB out of the hands of children and criminals, should not at the same time inadvertently stifle beneficial use of the drugs. GHB holds promises and treatment for narcolepsy, a debilitating and potentially fatal illness that affects 250,000 Americans; and this bill, Mr. Speaker, allows under carefully circumscribed conditions the use of GHB for medical research and treatment. It certainly has its insidious uses. That is the main thrust of this bill, as it should be. It also has some potentially miraculous ones. This bill I believe, Mr. Speaker, successfully addresses both. I look forward to its passage this year. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to yield 10 minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee) for her to control on behalf of the Committee on the Judiciary.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Stupak), the sponsor of the bill who has worked tirelessly on this with the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee) and the gentlewoman from Michigan (Ms. Stabenow).

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Michigan (Ms. Stabenow), a leader in this effort on this legislation.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from the Virgin Islands (Mrs. Christensen).

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Andrews). (Mr. ANDREWS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to my friend the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro).

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to claim the time of the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Dingell).

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Norwood), the sponsor of the underlying Norwood- Dingell bill.

Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Kind). (Mr. KIND asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)