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CLOTURE MOTION
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Pursuant to rule XXII, the Chair lays before the Senate the pending cloture motion, which the clerk will state.
The bill clerk read as follows:
Cloture Motion
We, the undersigned Senators, in accordance with the provisions of rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate, do hereby move to bring to a close debate on the nomination of Executive Calendar No. 968, Julianna Michelle Childs, of South Carolina, to be United States Circuit Judge for the District of Columbia Circuit.
Richard J. Durbin, Richard Blumenthal, Alex Padilla,
Christopher A. Coons, Gary C. Peters, Elizabeth Warren,
Mazie K. Hirono, Tammy Baldwin, Tina Smith, Mark R.
Warner, Edward J. Markey, Robert P. Casey, Jr., Martin
Heinrich, Jeanne Shaheen, Sherrod Brown, Margaret Wood
Hassan.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. By unanimous consent, the mandatory quorum call has been waived.
The question is, Is it the sense of the Senate that debate on the nomination of Julianna Michelle Childs, of South Carolina, to be United States Circuit Judge for the District of Columbia Circuit, shall be brought to a close?
The yeas and nays are mandatory under the rule.
The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk called the roll.
Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Connecticut (Mr. Blumenthal), the Senator from Vermont (Mr. Leahy), the Senator from New Mexico (Mr. Lujan), the Senator from Massachusetts (Mr. Markey), and the Senator from New York (Mr. Schumer) are necessarily absent.
Mr. THUNE. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from North Dakota (Mr. Cramer), the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Hagerty), the Senator from Ohio (Mr. Portman), and the Senator from Nebraska (Mr. Sasse).
The yeas and nays resulted--yeas 58, nays 33, as follows:
YEAS--58
Baldwin Bennet Blackburn Booker Brown Burr Cantwell Capito Cardin Carper Casey Collins Coons Cornyn Cortez Masto Duckworth Durbin Feinstein Gillibrand Graham Grassley Hassan Heinrich Hickenlooper Hirono Kaine Kelly King Klobuchar Manchin Menendez Merkley Murkowski Murphy Murray Ossoff Padilla Peters Reed Romney Rosen Rounds Sanders Schatz Scott (SC) Shaheen Sinema Smith Stabenow Tester Tillis Van Hollen Warner Warnock Warren Whitehouse Wyden Young
NAYS--33
Barrasso Blunt Boozman Braun Cassidy Cotton Crapo Cruz Daines Ernst Fischer Hawley Hoeven Hyde-Smith Inhofe Johnson Kennedy Lankford Lee Lummis Marshall McConnell Moran Paul Risch Rubio Scott (FL) Shelby Sullivan Thune Toomey Tuberville Wicker
NOT VOTING--9
Blumenthal Cramer Hagerty Leahy Lujan Markey Portman Sasse Schumer
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Van Hollen). On this vote, the yeas are 58, the nays are 33.
The motion is agreed to.
The senior Senator from Maryland.
Prescription Drug Costs
Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, I rise today to discuss a critical issue that continues to take a heavy toll on the health and financial well-
being of Americans: high prescription drug prices.
This uniquely American problem has U.S. families paying the highest price compared to other countries, leading to millions of Americans having to leave their pharmacies with their prescription drugs left on the table. No one should have to go into debt to buy prescription drugs that they need to stay healthy, productive, and to have a healthy life.
Twenty-nine percent of Americans either cannot afford their prescription drugs or are rationing them. And the United States stands alone in this among the developed nations of the world.
The United States spends approximately $575 billion annually on prescription drugs, or about 14 percent of the total healthcare expenditures. In 2019, the United States spent, on average, $1,126 per capita on prescription medicines, twice as high as a comparable amount spent in the industrial world.
Americans and Marylanders are struggling to pay their prescription drug medications, and it is long past time for Congress to remedy this problem. Prescription drugs have been lifesaving for millions, but if they are not affordable, then their benefit is moot. High prescription drug prices drive health inequalities that we are fighting to eradicate since groups in fair or poor health most struggle to afford their medications.
For years, Congress has been working on commonsense solutions to increase access to affordable prescription medications, reducing costs for patients and taxpayers. It is now time to act.
U.S. prescription drug prices are set through an opaque process by manufacturers, pharmaceutical benefit manufacturers, and payers. Prices are often disconnected from the health impacts of the products being purchased.
Opponents of addressing the high drug costs claim that more affordable prices will come at the expense of innovation. I say, and the research agrees, this is a false choice. To ensure access through innovative treatments and prescriptions, the U.S. Government makes significant investments in biomedical research. The Presiding Officer knows that very well from his position on the Appropriations Committee. No greater example of this investment is the National Institutes of Health located in our home State of Maryland, which is the world's largest government funder of biomedical research. Almost all drugs rely on NIH-supported basic research, and the returns on these investments are very high.
Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have found that every $125 million NIH grant leads to $375 million more in private market value, 33 more patents, and one new drug.
Another study estimates that the rate of return on NIH investment is 43 percent and that each dollar in NIH funding leads to an additional
$8.40 in private research and development spending. So the government investments are well done--it leverages a lot more--but the government is the key player.
Further, the Small Business Innovation Research and the Small Business Technology Transfer, SBIR/STTR programs, also support innovation. SBIR/STTR currently are the largest U.S. Federal Government programs supporting small businesses to conduct research and investment. SBIR began in 1982 and currently requires that each Federal Agency spending more than $100 million annually on external research set aside 3.2 percent of those funds for awards to small businesses. SBIR is very selective, with only about 22 percent of the applicants receiving funding. For many small firms, the SBIR ``serves as the first place many entrepreneurs involved in technological innovation''--where they get their funding.
Through the SBIR/STTR programs, NIH supports drug innovation by setting aside more than 3.2 percent of its overall Intramural Research and Development budget specifically to support early stage small businesses through the Nation. Many companies leverage this NIH funding to attract the partners and investors needed to take an innovation to the market.
For example, Amgen, which was founded in 1980, received SBIR investment in 1986. Today, it is a multinational biopharmaceutical company with over 20,000 employees. Despite these significant taxpayer investments, prescription drugs are often priced at levels that limit access to lifesaving drugs, particularly among those who are underinsured or uninsured. Even after accounting for the costs and risks of research and development, evidence shows the returns to new products exceed normal rates of return.
Drug companies continue to raise prices on consumers without justification, and we must crack down on price gouging and enforce transparency and drug pricing. That is why I strongly support the policies the Senate Finance Committee recently released, which comprise of comprehensive reform to lower prescription drug prices for Americans.
One policy included in this package that I have long supported is empowering Medicare to begin negotiating directly for the price of prescription drugs. This is just common sense. This is what businesses do. This is a free market. We negotiate.
In the private sector, no plan sponsor or manager would ever accept responsibility without the ability to decide how to negotiate. No private sector company would parcel themselves out in order to negotiate; they would use their full size as a market force. We don't do that in Medicare. Medicare negotiations will ensure that patients with Medicare get the best deal possible on high-priced drugs.
Another policy I support in prescription drug affordability is capping Medicare patients' out-of-pocket costs at no more than $2,000 per year. Today, there is no cap on spending for prescription drugs for seniors on Medicare. This policy will prevent Medicare beneficiaries from paying tens of thousands of dollars to purchase lifesaving drugs prescribed by their doctors.
The policies I have just outlined, along with additional reforms--and there are several others that are included in this package, including a required rebate if a drug manufacturer increases their price beyond the cost of inflation. There are other issues here to protect the solvency long term of prescription drug benefits and Medicare beneficiaries. This will make prescription drugs affordable for individuals and families who desperately need it.
I urge all my colleagues to come together to address this urgent issue. We have done the work. Now it is time to vote, getting these savings back into our constituents' pockets.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Cortez Masto). The Senator from Maryland.
____________________
SOURCE: Congressional Record Vol. 168, No. 116
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