At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday, Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) spoke about the ability of individual senators to call bills to the floor for a vote.
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NewsTranscript
00:00 Thank you, Mr. Chairman. With me today, Mr. Chairman, are two interns in my office,
00:07 Ms. Anna Kate Luke and Quinn Eisenfeld.
00:12 I wanted to recognize them today. They're sitting behind me.
00:16 Mr. Mitchell, I'm sorry about your health challenges.
00:20 You made a very impassioned plea for us to consider the various bills that have come out of this committee.
00:31 Why do you think the Senate hasn't, the full Senate hasn't taken them up?
00:37 I think you've been busy with some other things.
00:41 You really think that's the reason?
00:44 Part of the reason, I think, yes, is that the Senate has been busy with many other things.
00:49 I do think that there is an appetite on both sides of the aisle to advance these bills, maybe in the lame duck session.
00:57 Respectfully, I think you're wrong.
00:59 Tell me.
01:01 The majority leader controls the floor of the United States Senate.
01:07 Whether that majority leader is a Republican or a Democrat,
01:12 one person controls what the entire United States Senate can consider.
01:21 And I don't mean to pick on Senator Schumer. He's my friend.
01:26 He is exercising the power that we have ceded to him.
01:35 If Republicans were in the majority, I feel pretty confident in saying that our majority leader, Senator McConnell, would exercise the same power.
01:48 Do you think the Senate ought to establish a new rule that all senators are equal and some aren't more equal than others?
02:01 And that if a senator can demonstrate that he or she has 60 votes to pass a bill,
02:11 perhaps through the number of co-sponsors, though that wouldn't be the only way,
02:17 that that senator should have the right to bring the bill to the floor of the United States Senate
02:22 and allow senators in front of God and the country and their constituents to vote on it?
02:29 Senator, you're way over my pay grade.
02:31 OK. You don't have an opinion on that?
02:33 No.
02:34 Professor, you're an attorney. Do you have an opinion?
02:37 You don't want to make Senator Schumer mad? Isn't that your concern here?
02:43 That's an excellent question. It does seem to me that that level of control could be not optimal.
02:52 The level of control exercised by one person is not optimal.
02:54 You're a professor, right?
02:55 I am a professor.
02:56 Not optimal.
02:57 Correct.
02:58 Yeah. In the real world, we say it sucks.
03:07 I came here today to learn, and I have learned a lot, but here's what I'm trying to understand.
03:17 Professor, is your contention that because of the patent abuse, your words, not mine,
03:28 that pharmaceutical drug companies are making obscene profits in the United States?
03:36 Thank you for the question, sir. I don't think it's obscene.
03:40 I think that, as many people have pointed out, in the United States,
03:44 we do fund research and development for the whole world, and that's a very, very naughty problem.
03:50 So that's a challenge that I think we all need to take on.
03:56 I do think that patent abuse contributes to lack of innovation, which might seem counterintuitive,
04:04 but I'll tell you why.
04:06 Let me stop you for a second because I'm going to run out of time.
04:10 You use the term patent abuse.
04:15 You're obviously using it in a pejorative sense.
04:20 Is this patent abuse illegal?
04:23 It is not currently illegal, but there are mechanisms that we could readily employ to curtail it.
04:33 If we passed a bill?
04:35 If we passed bills.
04:37 There's also a lot that agencies can do right now using their current powers.
04:42 So why don't they?
04:44 They don't because I think that Congress doesn't adequately push them to do it.
04:50 So you need to hold oversight hearings, hauling up the FDA and the PTO,
04:54 asking them why they don't cooperate more, including on the sort of thing that they can already do,
05:01 which is exchange information, including trade secret information protected by trade secrecy laws.
05:06 You think the problem is in part within our administrative agencies like the FTC?
05:12 The FTC is, I think, doing a cleanup job on the back end, but the FTC can only work on the back end.
05:18 Recall that the FTC's jurisdiction is antitrust.
05:21 That's after all the bad stuff has already happened.
05:24 They try to clean up on the back end.
05:26 We need to nip the problem in the bud on the front end.
05:29 What about the FDA?
05:31 FDA can help, and the PTO can help.
05:34 Is the FDA doing a bad job with controlling patent abuse?
05:39 The FDA considers its role ministerial.
05:43 Are they doing a bad job in your opinion?
05:45 Come on, professor, we're trying to find solutions here.
05:48 Don't dance around on me.
05:49 Tell me what you think.
05:50 I think they could do more.
05:52 Okay.
05:53 I'm gone way over.
05:54 Thanks for your indulgence, Mr. Chairman.
05:57 Thank you.
05:59 I want to thank my colleagues for the work that you've done,
06:01 and I do hope, Senator Kennedy, that we get those bills on the floor
06:04 and have a chance to vote on them.
06:06 You've done a lot of work on that, Senator Cornyn,
06:08 and I'm very supportive of what you've done.
06:10 I've suggested a way, Mr. Chairman, that we can get them on the floor.
06:13 I'm not trying to --
06:16 Talk to your friend, the majority leader.
06:18 I'm not trying to step on Senator Schumer's toes by any stretch.
06:23 Let's go back to the issue here.
06:25 Thank you.
06:26 You know