Executive Session

Floor Speech

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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I know my friend from Illinois, Senator Durbin, is sincere in his desire to get some relief for the DACA recipients, whose case is now pending before the U.S. Supreme Court. I share a desire to give them some certainty. That is why I supported what President Trump offered in February of 2018, which was a pathway to citizenship not only for the individuals who had applied for and received deferred action under President Obama's administration but for all those who were eligible but did not apply.

What continues to confuse me is how our Democratic colleagues will routinely vote against that offer, which was incredibly generous. I don't think any other President in my lifetime would have had the boldness and the courage to offer a pathway to citizenship for 1.8 million DACA-eligible young people, but President Trump did, and our Democratic colleagues turned it down. That leads me to wonder about their sincerity. Do they like this political issue more than they have a desire to find a solution to the problem?

I agree that these young people, who through no fault of their own came to the United States because their parents brought them here, are the most sympathetic and deserving cohort of immigrants in the country. I wish we could work together to come up with a solution. But at some point you have to wonder whether our Democratic colleagues prefer not to solve the problem but would rather try to portray this as a political football for partisan advantage in the runup to the next election.

That is tragic--toying with the lives of these young people, stoking their insecurity, telling them you are on their side but on the other hand voting against an offer to provide them a pathway toward citizenship. I don't know how you reconcile those two positions. Prescription Drug Costs

Mr. President, on another matter, I introduced a bill with our colleague from Connecticut, Senator Blumenthal, to address the rising costs at the pharmacy counter. Senator Blumenthal is a Democrat. I am a Republican. He is from Connecticut. I am from Texas. But we both heard the same thing from our constituents: Prescription drugs--particularly the out-of-pocket costs to consumers--are too high, especially with the huge deductibles and the huge copays under the Affordable Care Act.

Over the last several months, we have dug into the reasons behind those high costs, and it is safe to say there is a lot that concerns us.

One of the most egregious forms of abuse we have seen deals with the patent system. Under the patent system, if you come up with a new lifesaving drug, then you are guaranteed the exclusive right to make and to sell that drug, and you are protected from any competition for a period of time. But after that period of time expires, what is supposed to happen is that generic alternatives are supposed to be available to compete and bring down the price for consumers. That is the case for 90 percent of the drugs we take.

Our country offers the most robust protection in the world for intellectual property. We know companies are unlikely to pour extensive time, money, and resources into developing these new cures unless, at the end of it, there is some reward. I get that, and I support that.

But the patent system is designed to provide a limited time period during which the manufacturer can be the sole seller on the market before generic alternatives can become available and before competitors can enter the market. What is happening is that some companies are abusing that system and extending that period of exclusivity by filing tens--sometimes in excess of 100 patents.

In one case involving a drug called HUMIRA, which is one of the best selling drugs in the world, there are four approved competitors in Europe. In the United States, HUMIRA has in excess of 120 separate patents designed to crowd out and prevent any competition while maintaining their exclusivity in the marketplace.

That is what is called the patent thicketing. It involves using intricate webs of patents to keep competition at bay for as long as possible, meaning that your profits and your exclusive rights to sell this drug are high.

There is also something called product hopping, which occurs when a company develops a reformulation of an existing drug about to lose its exclusivity and then pulls the original product off the market. This is done not because the new formula is more effective necessarily but because pulling the original drug off the market before it loses its exclusivity prevents generic competitors. That is called product hopping.

The bill Senator Blumenthal and I introduced aims to stop these anti- competitive behaviors, allow competitors to come to market sooner, and bring down prices for consumers. The Affordable Prescriptions for Patients Act streamlines the litigation process by limiting the number of patents companies can use when they are litigating their patent rights. Ultimately, we believe--and I believe it is borne out by the Congressional Budget Office scoring--this would allow competitors to resolve patent issues faster and bring those generic drugs to market sooner. This is how we improve competition and lower prices without getting in the way of lifesaving innovation.

The added benefit to this bill is the Federal savings it would provide for taxpayers. The Congressional Budget Office says that this bill would lower Federal spending by more than half a billion dollars over 10 years. That is not a panacea, but it is a good start. This is just savings to the Federal Government for Medicare and Medicaid. There would undoubtedly be more savings for consumers who get their health coverage through private health insurance.

It checks every box. It checks innovation, increases competition, lowers prices for patients, and saves money for taxpayers. On top of that, this bill has a raft of bipartisan cosponsors. This is not a partisan bill; this is a bipartisan bill. In addition to Senator Blumenthal, five other Democrats have endorsed the bill, including both the Democratic whip and the assistant Democratic leader.

I am sure it comes as no surprise that this bill sailed through the Judiciary Committee without a single Senator voting against it. It was unanimous. During simpler times, it would have quickly passed the full Senate and moved on to the House for their consideration and then gone on to the President for his signature. But we all know things aren't quite that easy these days, and even bipartisan bills get caught up in the political crosshairs.

According to a report in POLITICO, the minority leader from New York, Senator Schumer, is blocking this bill from passing in the Senate. He is blocking one of his own Member's bills--and one to lower prescription drug prices, of all things. While the American people suffer from the crush of high costs at the pharmacy, he stonewalls, and it is to the detriment of just about everybody--except one group.

I know there are some drug manufacturers that must be thrilled with his blocking the bill that would reduce their compensation and increase competition. You see, the army of special interests who have been fighting my bill since day one when it was introduced is ecstatic that the Democratic leader is blocking this bill, but I am not, and I don't think the rest of the Senate is either because this is a noncontroversial, bipartisan bill. The only thing that Democrats are doing by continuing to hold up this bill is to carry water for one of Washington's most prominent special interest groups. As long as they do, it will be to the detriment of the American people.

I know this frustration is bipartisan because my friend Senator Blumenthal is just as frustrated by this ridiculous holdup as I am. We have tried to reason with the minority leader. We have tried to negotiate. We have tried to get him to allow the bill to come to the floor, but we have had no luck so far.

Last week, I came to the Senate floor to ask unanimous consent to pass this bill, and what happened next felt like a scene from a bad made-for-TV political drama. The minority leader, who was unwilling to come to the floor and block the bill himself, tried to have one of the cosponsors of my bill do it for him, the Senator from Illinois. He would rather force his own member to block a popular bipartisan bill, which happens to have my name on it, than allow it to pass on its own.

Well, as you can imagine, that didn't go very well. So then it was on to plan B. They wanted to link the fate of our bill, which passed unanimously in the Judiciary Committee, with another bill that hasn't even passed out of committee.

The other bill was introduced by our friends, Senators Grassley and Durbin, and aims to provide greater transparency on drug prices, something that is definitely needed, and I don't object to it. But these bills are in very different places in the legislative process, and some Members on our side have concerns about a bill coming to the floor that hasn't even been through the committee of jurisdiction.

Now, to the minority leader this is just another creative way to stop passage of a noncontroversial bill and attach a free rider onto the bill, which, in essence, is a poison pill. The result is the same. Nothing passes.

As I said, the bill Senator Blumenthal and I have introduced is bipartisan. It is not controversial. It went through regular order. Every member of the Judiciary Committee had a chance to vote on it, and no one voted against it. We checked on our side, and there is no objection. We have run a hotline on the Democratic side, only to find that the Democratic leader is the one himself who is blocking it.

Well, unfortunately, politics, once again, has overwhelmed our collective good judgment and good sense. I know the Democratic leader doesn't want any bills to pass that Republicans can use to tell their constituents that they are listening to their concerns and acting on those concerns in the run up to the next election. He doesn't really care about the merits of the legislation or that it would, in fact, help New Yorkers. It is politically inconvenient, and that, clearly, is his top priority.

The American people deserve better. With the House working day and night to remove the President from office and the next election less than a year away, the opportunities for us to pass any sort of bipartisan legislation are getting slimmer and slimmer.

I plan to return to the floor later this week with my colleague from Connecticut to ask unanimous consent that this bill be passed. If the Democratic leader is going to block the bill, I want it to be clear to the American people and the people who would benefit from the passage of the bill being signed into law. I want them to see him do it and to hold him accountable for his misguided politics.

I hope the minority leader will rethink his decision to block this bill so that we can all work together to deliver bipartisan results for our constituents.

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