Rick Santorum

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I rise today to recognize the accomplishments of a very bright and focused group of students: the William Penn Middle School Odyssey of the Mind Team from Yardley, PA. This team of seven children has returned from competition boasting first place out of nearly 700 teams from across the country and around the world. Their perfect score reflects their top performance in all categories of competition, and their exhibition of exceptional creativity has earned them the Ranatra Fusca Award for which the team's name will be placed on a trophy at the Smithsonian Institute. Odyssey of the Mind is a creative problem-solving program for children of all ages, from kindergarten through college. Through regional, State, country, and international competition, participant groups spend the better part of a year working on a solution to one of five problems as devised by the program. Contestants compete with students of similar age and must meet a number of criteria which include: limiting expenses to a strict budget, building mechanical creations to accomplish specific tasks, writing and staging an original performance, and earning points from the judges based on their solution to the problem they have chosen, style in solving the problem, and their ability to spontaneously answer a problem on the day of competition. Recycling trash and other discarded materials to build a set and costumes for their performance and to engineer a vaccuuming contraption and a water quality enhancer, the Yardley team focused on the issue of environmental preservation. With a theme based on ``The Wizard of Oz,'' the characters of the team's sketch worked on cleaning up an imaginary environment found under a child's bed. The vision of Katie Barberides, Colleen Considine, Andrew Ettenger, Jamie Hale, Greg Plumb, Brianna Pollock, and Evan Verdini was awarded a perfect score from the judges on the three scored fronts. These seven critical thinkers clinched first place at the World Finals in their division, participants under 15 years of age. I invite my Senate colleagues to join me in congratulating these young intellectuals on their enthusiasm for creative learning and the hard work they put into this problem-solving program. They represent the American spirit of ingenuity and should be very proud of their individual and team accomplishments. I wish them the best of luck in their future endeavors, and I hope they continue to enjoy learning skills through other innovative opportunities.

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President I am pleased to introduce legislation along with my colleague Senator Specter to establish a one dollar silver coin that will benefit the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, PA. As the first national center of its kind in the country, the National Constitution Center will promote understanding of the United States Constitution and its values. The events of the past year in our nation as well as recent judicial rulings have brought increased attention to those principles and values that define and bind us as Americans. All would agree that the United States Constitution is central to defining our country, who we are, and how we live as Americans. Even as we often debate in the halls of Congress and the Supreme Court those policies and laws that best reflect the values and intent of the Constitution, we all recognize the freedoms and opportunity that this remarkable document secures for us. The National Constitution Center has been an important project in Philadelphia with which Senator Specter and I have been involved. Construction began on September 17, 2000. When the Constitution Center is completed as expected on July 4, 2003, it will be a key feature of a revitalized Independence Mall where it will join Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell. The issuance of this coin would coincide with the opening of the Center. I encourage all of my colleagues to support the National Constitution Center by cosponsoring this bill. I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the record.

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President I am pleased to introduce legislation along with my colleague Senator Specter to establish a one dollar silver coin that will benefit the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, PA. As the first national center of its kind in the country, the National Constitution Center will promote understanding of the United States Constitution and its values. The events of the past year in our nation as well as recent judicial rulings have brought increased attention to those principles and values that define and bind us as Americans. All would agree that the United States Constitution is central to defining our country, who we are, and how we live as Americans. Even as we often debate in the halls of Congress and the Supreme Court those policies and laws that best reflect the values and intent of the Constitution, we all recognize the freedoms and opportunity that this remarkable document secures for us. The National Constitution Center has been an important project in Philadelphia with which Senator Specter and I have been involved. Construction began on September 17, 2000. When the Constitution Center is completed as expected on July 4, 2003, it will be a key feature of a revitalized Independence Mall where it will join Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell. The issuance of this coin would coincide with the opening of the Center. I encourage all of my colleagues to support the National Constitution Center by cosponsoring this bill. I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the record.

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. That is absolutely right. The initial comment the Senator made is right. This is the fundamental issue we need to debate. Should the American public, through its pricing system, free market pricing system of drugs, continue to subsidize the rest of the world in pharmaceutical research? If the answer is no, we need to state that. If the answer is, no, we don't want that to continue, we should come out in front and say: We are not going to let the United States consumer bear the brunt of researching new drugs. If that is what we want to do, we need to be very upfront about that. That may be a very legitimate position to take. I don't share that view. I don't believe that is the right thing for us to do. I don't think that moves this country forward. I don't think that keeps us on the cutting edge of an industry that is a world leader. If that is what this body wants, then we are going to make the short- term trade, and the underlying bill on generics is exactly in this direction. We are going to make the short-term trade. We will have to charge our consumers less, allow more generic drugs, allow reimportation of drugs, all of which will undermine and cut into the revenues and intellectual property of the pharmaceutical industry, which will subsequently reduce their ability to do research on drugs for the short-term gain of having cheaper prices on the drugs available today. The exchange is, lower prices on the existing pot of drugs available today versus a cure for heart disease or cancer or emphysema or Parkinson's or you name it down the road. That is the tradeoff. Let's be honest. Of the drugs available today, many of them are very good, but some of them are not as accessible. You could make the argument, it is more important to get those drugs to people today than it is to get that next generation of cures tomorrow. Maybe we will have to wait. Instead of getting them next year or 2 years from now, we will have to make it 5 or 10 years. That is a tradeoff. Let's have a debate about that. But let's understand that all this other talk is just glossing over the broader issue. That is the fundamental issue. I haven't seen any polls on this issue. There may be Americans who believe that is the way to go. There may be others who feel strongly the other way. We have to understand that is the debate. With that, understand the bottom line: Lower prices, either on generic drugs or reimported drugs, versus cures tomorrow and the next. That is the debate. We must make a choice.

Mr. SANTORUM. Will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. SANTORUM. I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. SANTORUM. I must respectfully disagree with my colleague's assertion on that point, for it is factually incorrect, although a commonly cited myth. According to recent findings by NDC Health, a health care information company, the pharmaceutical industry spends significantly more on research and development than it does on advertising. For 2001, $2.8 billion was spent on direct-to-consumer advertising. This is less than one-tenth of the $30.3 billion America's pharmaceutical industry spent on research and development. Moreover, I am someone who believes that a company is entitled to advertise and sell their product. Certainly, I don't know of any business that makes a product that doesn't tell anybody what their product is. If you look at the research and development cost of every other industry compared to their advertising cost, the pharmaceutical industry would probably stack up better than any other industry. You could say they are spending a lot on advertising. I would hope they are spending money to try to tell people what their products are about. Are you telling me they shouldn't be able to spend money to tell American consumers or physicians or hospitals what their product is and how it can be used? Of course, they should. They have an obligation to.

Mr. SANTORUM. Yes.

Mr. SANTORUM. Not to mention all the hundreds or thousands of compounds that were even tried to be researched, and they ended up where they decided: No, we are not even producing a drug that could be sought for approval.

Mr. SANTORUM. Let me explain to you exactly how that process works. It is not a free market. They cannot set their prices. They have to negotiate with a board, and it is called the Patented Medicines Price Review Board. That board sets the prices in Canada. They do so in the following way. The statute mandates that the price of most new patented medicines may not exceed the price of the most expensive drug marketed in Canada that treats the same disease. So let's take HIV/AIDS. You have a regiment of drugs that are out there to treat it. Someone comes on the market with a brand new AIDS drug that may cure AIDS or may substantially improve the quality of life for someone with AIDS. In Canada, they cannot, under the statute, charge more than what the highest priced drug already in the market is, which may have an improving effect on the quality of AIDS but may not be one of those transformational drugs. So, No. 1, statutorily they are limited. No. 2, the price in Canada of a drug constituting a breakthrough drug, in therapy, may not exceed the median of its price in seven countries. Let me tell you, all of those specified countries, with the exception of the U.S.--that is one of the seven--the other six, interestingly enough, are all price-controlled countries where the government sets the prices. So it is a spiraling-down effect. One refers to the other country as a way to set the price, and so they each keep setting lower and lower prices, and they rachet the price down by having all these price control countries as the reference point for Canada.

Mr. SANTORUM. There are enormous implications if we allow the Canadian Government to deny and basically say to the company: Either take it at this price or we will go ahead and manufacture it ourselves. By the way, once they license it in Canada, the Canadian manufacturer can appeal to the government and say: Look, yes, we are manufacturing it here, but for us to make a profit, we have to export some because we have to make it in sufficient quantities. And if that is approved, they can send the drug back here to the United States. Our companies could do all the research, expend all the money, and then be forced not to be able to sell the drug. In that case, the Canadian Government will say, it is not important enough. If you don't give it to us at the price we want, you lose the competition between three other drugs that may be similarly situated. You just don't sell the drug in Canada. Or, if we think it is important enough, if we think it is vital to our national health and you don't want to sell it to us at a price we believe is reasonable, we will have compulsory licensing. They simply license it to another. That is not some far off concept. Right after the anthrax scare in the Senate, the Canadian health minister said that if they cannot get enough quantities of Cipro, they were going to revoke the patent of Bayer and produce it in Canada. So just understand, this is not a theoretical concept. This is a real concept. Even if it is not done routinely, which it is not, it is certainly a hammer that the government uses to get prices at a level that they want, not that the manufacturer believes is fair for their product.

Mr. SANTORUM. Yes. I am happy to yield for a question.

Mr. SANTORUM. That is why we have Customs inspectors and FDA inspectors, who do, in fact, monitor things coming into this country for purposes that are fundamentally different. When you are talking about pharmaceutical products, that is a fundamentally different area. All I am suggesting is that what is being created in the Dorgan amendment is an opportunity. As the amendment says, you have to have a pattern of problems with these drugs before you can do anything. I think that creates a loophole that is in today's world of terrorism, one that would be certainly filled by any number of terrorist organizations that want to hit the United States with some sort of bioterrorism. I want to get back to what the Senator from North Dakota said prior to the vote on the last amendment. He said he would like to have someone come here and explain to him why drugs in Canada are so much less expensive than they are here in the United States, why we pay such premiums for those drugs here in the United States, and why Canada can sell them so much less expensively than they do here. There are a lot of reasons. Let me give you a few. No. 1, the Canadian health care system is a single-payer system. It is a government-run health care system. It is run through the provinces and the territories. This government-run health care system negotiates prices. Not all drugs that are made available in the United States are available in Canada. Why? Because the Canadian Government has a formulary. There may be four arthritis drugs that may be very effective in dealing with different forms of arthritis. The Canadian Government basically negotiates with companies, plays one against the other, and gets the cheapest price. They make one available. That one available may be the right particular drug for this group of arthritis sufferers. But it may not be the best drug for the whole class. That is why there is probably four of them. They have different little initiatives that make their drug more effective on certain people in certain circumstances. But in Canada, you get one. Maybe you get two in a general class. They negotiate it based on the best price they can get. That is one thing. In Canada, people don't get access to the variety of different drugs that may be the best therapy available. They negotiate a price because they are a big purchaser. They purchase for the entire 35 million people in Canada. They purchase drugs, and they compete it so they get one company getting the entire market, in many cases. So they can get a much reduced price as a result of the volume discount which they give. Again, they limit the access to a variety of different drugs to the people of Canada. It is a balancing act for the drug company that wants to compete in Canada to get access to that market. I am sure the Senator from North Dakota and the Senator from Michigan are familiar with this. The second thing is there is a provision in the Canadian law called ``compulsory licensing.'' Most Senators on the other side of the aisle know what compulsory licensing is. But just in case they don't, let me explain to Members what the impact of compulsory licensing has on drug prices. Compulsory licensing is the ability for the Canadian Government, if they do not get a satisfactory negotiation for a drug they believe is necessary to be offered in Canada, and if they aren't happy with the price the pharmaceutical company is willing to sell that drug at, they can basically, in a word, steal the patent. Let me repeat that. If Merck, which happens to be a big pharmaceutical company in my State, wants to sell a particular drug that is effective for arthritis--maybe it is a very new drug, an important drug, one on which they have spent a lot of money, and it has tremendous results and they want to sell it in Canada--said: We will sell it for $2 a pill here in the United States. Canadian says: That is nice. We are not going to pay $2. We want a volume discount. Merck says: OK. We will negotiate some sort of volume discount. We will sell it to you for $1.50 a pill. Canada says: That is nice. We will pay you 50 cents. Merck says: That is not a fair price. So they negotiate back and forth. OK. Fine. We believe this is an important drug for our people. If you want to sell it to us for 50 cents, you lose your patent. We will license it to someone here in Canada. They will make the drug, and you get nothing. Most people would say that doesn't seem particularly fair. No. It is not fair. But under Canadian law, I would suggest to you that not just Canada but in most countries around the world, unfortunately, that is a fact of life for many drug companies. If you point to Brazil, to South Africa, or to France, or to some other country, and ask, How can they get these drugs? It is because if they do not sell the drug at the price the national government wants the drug sold at, they steal the patent, they compulsory license it. You are now looking at a drug company that says: Wait a minute. We want to sell this drug for $2. It cost us 25 cents extra to make the pill. They say: Wait a minute. Why do you want to sell if for $2? It took us $800 million to bring this thing to market. We have a few research costs involved in getting this drug formulated, approved, and all the things that are necessary to make sure it is safe and effective. It cost us a lot of money. Yes, but making the pill doesn't cost a lot. But to get to where we can make the pill, it costs an enormous amount of money. We would like to recoup that. Because they are in business, they would like to make a profit. The Canadian Government says: Look, it only cost you a quarter to make this pill, but we are giving you 50 cents. You are making money. It is better than making no money. If you don't sell it to us for 50 cents, you make no money. So the drug company has to make this decision. Do I sell the drug at 50 cents and make some money, or do I choose not to sell the drug? They may have it be made somewhere else. Even if they don't compulsory license it--even if they say, no, they are not going to compulsory license it, they are not going to sell it, put aside compulsory licensing. They say: We want to sell the drug. It is 50 cents. You don't have access to our market. So the drug company has to make a decision. Do I sell the drug at 50 cents and make a small profit to help underwrite the cost of the research that was done on this drug, or do I choose not to sell? You can make the argument that they shouldn't sell. You can make the argument that they should try to negotiate a better deal. But there is one negotiator, the Government of Canada, and they set the price. If you do not like the price, you either don't sell, and no drug is made available in Canada, which is no skin off the back of Canadian Government because in most cases, most drugs are not available in Canada. It is just another drug that is not available. If they really want your drug, and if they really believe it is important to get your drug, they simply license it to someone in Canada, and they make the drug, which they buy. They can make the drug in such sufficient quantities that they can actually import that drug into the United States. So they can steal your patent. And under this bill, a stolen patent can be imported. I understand it is very, very popular to be beat up on pharmaceutical companies. They make money. We do not like anybody that makes money around here. So they make some money. They do some things that are cutting edge. For some reason this is a problem. It is very popular to go out and beat up on pharmaceutical companies for charging all this money for products that people need. But let me remind you, the Senator from Massachusetts said this bill will save $60 billion. If I am wrong on that, that is what I thought I heard yesterday. The Senator from Massachusetts said this will save $60 billion for the American consumer. My question is, save it from whom? Who is it going to cost? It comes from somewhere. The obvious answer is, it is going to save it from the pharmaceutical industry. Let's look at the pharmaceutical industry in this country, the much maligned pharmaceutical industry. What did this pharmaceutical industry do to deserve this treatment? What it did to deserve this treatment is invest more as an industry in research and development than any other industry in America. Let me repeat that. What have they done to incur the wrath of the U.S. Senate today? What they have done is invest more money in research and development than any other industry in America. As a result, they have come up with breakthrough drugs, which cost a lot of money but, by the way, save lives and improve the quality of life for millions in America. So what are we doing to thank them, to congratulate them, for being one of the leading exporters in this country, for improving our balance of payments in this country, for employing people in high-priced jobs in this country, for moving scientific research in this country, for curing diseases in this country, for improving the quality of life in this country, for extending lives in this country? We say we are going to whack off $60 billion out of your bottom line, which means, of course, the research will stop or be dramatically reduced. So understand what we are doing. We are all beating our chests saying: We are going to get the big, bad pharmaceutical companies that are pillaging the American public with outrageous drug prices, and we are going to cut those prices by 30 to 50 percent. Understand the consequences. Less money in research. Less money in research means fewer new drugs. Fewer new drugs mean people will die who would otherwise be saved by those innovations. That is what the consequences are. All I am suggesting is, if that is the tradeoff, if 30 percent less on your pharmaceutical price is a good tradeoff for not having the next generation of lifesaving drugs or quality-improving drugs, that is fine. That is a worthy debate in the Senate. It is one that we should have, but it is not one that we are having. The debate we are having is, corporate greed versus poor senior citizen. That is the debate here: These horrible pharmaceutical companies that are raping and pillaging the people of America while making these enormous profits. Look at their profit lines, look at the prices for their stock, and I will assure you, they are not showing those enormous profits. What is going to happen--if this were successful and we did take $60 billion out of this industry--and that is where it is coming from. It is not coming from anywhere else. It is not being drawn out of whole cloth. It is coming out this industry, which means $60 billion less of research. We run around this country, and we are very proud in the Senate talking about how we are increasing the budget for the National Institutes of Health and how we care deeply about improving the quality of health in this country and how we are going to put more and more taxpayers' dollars into solving diseases, into fighting problems that perplex us, into finding out more about how our bodies work. Wonderful. Wonderful. That is great basic research. It is important to do. It is great scientific discovery. But where does all this stuff lead? Where does this lead? In many, many cases it leads to research then being handed off to a private-sector organization that goes ahead and develops that lifesaving cure, that pharmaceutical product that, in the end, saves lives.

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I think the Senator from Oklahoma has made a vitally important point. We have gone through I can't tell you the number of steps to try to stop terrorism. The Senator from Kansas has just come to the floor. He has been a leader in the area of bioterrorism and agriterrorism. Under this provision that we are debating right now--the underlying Dorgan bill--you are creating an incredible loophole for terrorist attacks and bioterrorist attacks in this country. We are creating a loophole that allows any foreign country to go through Canada to import drugs into the United States. And the Canadian Government doesn't even inspect it and does not even open it. It can come right in here.

Mr. SANTORUM. That is important because another provision of the Canadian system is that the price may not increase more than the consumer price index. They fix prices even after they have set them in place. The prices of drugs are going up. The research involved in discovering new drugs and the complications of doing so is driving up drug prices. That is a problem. I think we do need to do something. But the issue is not price control. It is access to insurance. That is the key. What we need to do is to provide, for the private-sector American, the Medicare-eligible American, an opportunity to get insurance to reduce the cost of drugs to them. That is vitally important.

Mr. SANTORUM. I yield for a question.

Mr. SANTORUM. I have a question. Listening to your comments, are you suggesting that a product made in Iraq or Yemen or Iran or some other country that may have terrorists in their country, they could actually send a drug through Canada into the United States, without anybody inspecting it, and have it show up here not marked as from what country it came, and be sold here in America, under the Dorgan amendment?

Mr. SANTORUM. Will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. SANTORUM. So it would come in here under the Dorgan amendment, reimportation, not being reviewed by the FDA before it came here? Only if we found out the terrorist attack was successful through this scheme would we then find out that we have a problem?

Mr. SANTORUM. I would be happy to answer at some point.

Mr. SANTORUM. I will as soon as I finish the question from the Senator from Tennessee.

Mr. SANTORUM. I say to the Senator from Illinois, half the money in advertising for drug companies is for free samples, samples to physicians that end up going to patients for free medication. Just understand half of that money, roughly half, is for free samples given out to hospitals and doctors. That is a way many people who do not have prescription coverage end up getting some medication. I find it remarkable the Senator says that PhRMA has the Congress in a death grip, and then says somehow the bill that passed last year over PhRMA's objection will pass this year both in the House and the Senate. He says PhRMA has us in a death grip, but at the same time they are passing legislation willy-nilly. I find that inconsistent. I also find it inconsistent when the Senator says somehow or another we are relying on the courage of the Canadians--that is an often used term--to stand up to the drug companies. What courage is he talking about? He is talking about price controls. He was very forthright in saying we do not have the courage in the Congress to do price controls, so this is the next best thing. We all know how successful price controls are in America. They are an abject failure. We tried that in the 1970s. We have not tried it since because of the horrible disasters that occurred in our economy because of it. What we are doing here is trying to impose price controls. On whom? We are trying to impose price controls on an industry that invests more on saving lives and preserving the quality and quantity of people's lives than any other industry in America. How are we doing that? We are doing it by reimporting drugs. And the safety issue is clear. I encourage everyone to vote for the Cochran amendment. That is not going to be enough. Under this measure, the Dorgan proposal, drugs from all over the world--from terrorist countries--can come through Canada into this country without anybody inspecting them in Canada, no one. The law in Canada says they do not have to inspect it. As long as it is not to be used in Canada, all they have to do is mark it Canadian and ship it to the United States, and God knows what will be in the drugs. It could be terrorists, but it could be just phony drugs. We have no ability to check. This is a huge safety issue. While the Cochran amendment gets at it, it is very important we need to do other things on this legislation to ensure that we are not opening up another avenue for terrorism, another avenue for people to die. The Dorgan amendment says we are not going to do anything to stop the reimportation of drugs until we have a pattern of people dying. So if one person dies, we will keep going until we see three, four, or five? This is remarkable. For what? So we can get lower prices on pharmaceuticals. Understand what that means. The Senator from Illinois held up a picture of all the countries that have low prices for drugs. Every one of them have price controls, every one of them. They have price controls. They say to the company: Sell at the price we want you to sell it at or you cannot sell it. In Canada, yes, you pay a lower price. If the company does not take the lower price, No. 1, they cannot sell their drug in Canada. No. 2, if they do not take the lower price, Canada can go ahead and license someone in Canada to make it and infringe on their patent. What choice does the drugmaker have? None. He is absolutely correct. We in America subsidize that. He is absolutely right on that. There is no bone of contention. The question is, If we don't, what are the consequences? The consequences are very clear. There will be a dramatic reduction in the amount of research that is done. There will be less new drugs coming to market. There will be less cures. There will be less improvement of the quality of people's lives. That is a tradeoff. But to sit up here and say this is somehow the big bad drug companies against poor patients who cannot get their drugs because of the expense of the drugs here, we have to go to Canada to get them, is a false choice. The choice is, giving that drug at a lower price, yes; putting price controls in it. If that is what the Senator from Illinois wants, he ought to offer an amendment. The choice is less research and less cures in the future.

Mr. SANTORUM. I am happy to yield for a question.

Mr. SANTORUM. That would be far too late.

Mr. SANTORUM

Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I want to make sure we understand, No. 1, this vote did not have to occur. We saw woeful crocodile tears today about how we have to have this vote today and be delayed 2 days. The Senator from New Hampshire yesterday afternoon agreed to vitiate this vote and agreed to proceed to the bill. We could be discussing amendments right now if we wanted. We could have been discussing amendments last night. When I was on the floor at about 5 o'clock, we could have been debating amendments, but we were debating whether we would allow this vote to be vitiated or not and agree to the motion to proceed. I have to question how genuine the concern is about having this delay of 2 days when we could have been on the bill yesterday and we could be amending the bill as we speak. That is No. 1. No. 2, let's understand, the underlying bill is the discussion, which has to do with the generics versus the main line pharmaceutical companies, and how we deal with the issue of reimportation of drugs is going to be an issue--there will be other issues--related to prescriptions. But this is a vehicle for a much broader and I think to the American public more important debate, and that is how we are going to provide prescription drugs for seniors. That is what the majority leader has said this debate is going to be all about that we are going to move to very quickly once this motion to proceed is agreed to, and I believe it will be unanimous. Let's understand the game that has been set up. The majority leader has set up a procedure on the floor of the Senate to guarantee--and I am underlying that word--to guarantee that no bill to provide prescription drugs would pass the Senate. I do not say that lightly. I use the word ``guarantee.'' We have 100-percent assurance under this procedure that no bill to provide prescription drug coverage will pass the Senate. Why? Because in last year's budget agreement--I say last year's budget agreement and you say: Senator, what about this year's budget agreement? We do not have a budget agreement for this year. We have no agreement of the budget that provides for money to be set aside for a Medicare prescription drug benefit. So we have to go to last year's budget agreement to see what that provides for with respect to Medicare and prescription drug benefits. What does that provide for? Two things. No. 1, any bill that is not reported from the Finance Committee to the floor of the Senate on Medicare prescription drugs will have a 60-vote point of order against it. What does that mean? That means if we had a $10 bill, a bill that costs $10 to the American Treasury, on the floor of the Senate it would be subject to a budget point of order. It would have to have 60 votes. So what the Senator from South Dakota, the majority leader, has done, is he has required every single Medicare prescription drug bill to get 60 votes. The other budget provision says it had to be under $300 billion. Now, what we are hearing is that there is some outrage that we have delayed this all of less than a day actually, and that the majority wants to go forward and move their prescription drug bill. Fine. Let's look at this prescription drug bill. This is a bill they could not get through committee. Had they been able to get it through committee, I am sure they would have allowed Senator Baucus to mark up this bill and go through committee, but they could not get it through committee. So they bypassed the committee, thereby assuring, as the Senator from New Hampshire said, mutual assured destruction. This is a partisan exercise. So the bill will come to the floor. This is a bill that I have heard out in the hallways is going to cost upwards of a trillion dollars. Nobody has seen this bill. This is the largest expansion of entitlements in the history of this country, and no one has seen the bill. It is going to cost hundreds of billions, potentially a trillion dollars, over the next 10 years; it has not had one hearing in committee and it has not been marked up in the committee. What we are expected to do in the Senate is somehow agree to pass this bill within, according to the majority leader, the next 7 days. Within 7 or 8 days, we are going to pass a prescription drug bill that no one has seen, that nobody knows how much it costs--it could cost up to a trillion dollars--that no hearing has been held on, that no markup has been done on. If we are serious about getting a prescription drug benefit, this is not the way to present this to the Senate. What this is, pure and simple, is politics. This is about the majority leader being interested in setting up a procedure that will assure that no bill passes so they have the issue of saying, see, we wanted to give you all these wonderful things, we wanted to give you all these benefits, give you Cadillac this and Cadillac that, and these lousy Republicans do not want to let you have it. I suggest that we have three proposals on this side of the aisle on which we would love to get votes. Senator Smith from New Hampshire has one; Senators Hagel and Ensign have one; and then there is the tripartisan bill, all of which will move the ball down the field substantially when it comes to providing prescription drug benefits for seniors, all of which I believe could pass the test of the budget, which is getting through the Finance Committee and being under $300 billion in expenditures. That is what we should be doing. We should be trying to pass a bill that gets through the Senate so we can get it to conference, work with the House, and get a drug benefit by November, not get a political issue by November. This process has been set up to fail. This process has been set up to fail so some believe they will get political advantage by doing so. I want everybody to understand that when next Friday rolls around and we are at loggerheads because nobody can get 60 votes on a budget point of order and everybody is now gnashing their teeth and wringing their hands and saying, oh, woe is us, we could not get a bill done, we failed the American public, the Republicans would not let us pass our bill, or whatever the case may be, understand the template has been set for that today. The template has been set for that today by bringing a bill to the floor which requires 60 votes as a budget point of order. Once that template was set, once the majority leader decided to bypass the Finance Committee, a Finance Committee that, without question, could pass a bill--there is no question they could pass a bill, but again the majority leader, as he did with trade, as he has done with a whole lot of issues with respect to the Finance Committee, has basically pushed the Finance Committee aside. I do not know whether he does not trust the committee, whether he does not trust the leadership. I do not know what it is, but the Finance Committee has pretty much been made irrelevant over the past several months by the majority leader. What we have as a result of that is a procedure that is doomed to failure.