looks as if it was resurrected. we are getting a new look at new legislation party leaders hope will please conservatives and moderates. joining me is congresswoman diane black, a republican of tennessee and chair of the budget committee in the house of representatives. thanks for joining us. appreciate it. you re welcome, jake. great to be with you. tell us the latest on republican healthcare efforts to repeal and replace obamacare. do you think there will be a vote on this friday or saturday? we re not sure yet. there are a couple of measures still being looked at by the various folks that were not on board before, but the latest amendment has really helped us to be able to satisfy a lot of people s concerns. and, look, it is not a perfect bill but i think it is a bill worthy of moving forward, and there are still things that can be added. this is just a first step. obviously the senate have a bite at the apple, and then we ll be having conference committee that gives us anothe
res of that of those programs in decade. senator cassidy and senator murray were the leaders on that committee along with senator murray. the food and drug administration we made important changes in the food and drug administration giving them new authority and new responsibility for example, new authority to hire and pay the experts they need to move products and devices through the fda at a more rapid rate saving time and money and getting those devices into the medicine cabinets of the doctor s offices. we passed that into law in december. and then the implementation of obamacare and the various proposals to repair the damage done by obamacare and replace it with concrete, practical alternatives for the american people to give them more choices of lower cost health insurance. dr. price, i believe you are an excellent nominee for this job.
congressman tom price. his opening statement here on capitol hill. let s listen. you and your wife betty who is here today. i enjoyed having the opportunity to visit with you in my office and to learn from you about your plans. dr. price will be introduced today in a few minutes by johnny isakson, a member of this committee, and dr. price s home state senator. before senator isaacson introduces the nominee, senator murray and i will each make a fuf introductory remarks. after the nominee makes his statement, we ll have the usual round of questions. now let me say something about the round of questions. last night, we had a hearing of thr three and one-half hours. i tried as chairman to be fair by following the same precedent we had for president obama s two education nominees by having one
like to ask consent to put parts of the record of the nominees of michael levitt, andrew van orbenback and tom daschle into the record of this hearing. that would be fine. and again, our members have questions because this nominee is going to have jurisdiction over the health care and lives of millions of americans, and we want to know where he stands before we make a decision yes or no for him to be there. so that s why it is so important to members of our committee. now having said that, i want to say this. the health of our families and communities could not be more important to our strength as a nation. when a young child goes to school healthy and ready to learn, she s better prepared to succeed. when women are empowered to plan their families and pursue all of their dreams, our communities benefit. when workers have access to quality health care that they can afford, our economy grows.
president-elect trump s nominee approximately the same as the way we treated other nominees is to have a single round of seven-minute questions today. that would be the precedent followed with secretary thompson and that seems to be to give every member of the senate more time to ask questions of the secretary. this is a courtesy hearing. dr. price will be before the finance committee on next tuesday. a number of the members of this committee are also members of the finance committee. we don t vote on his nomination. they vote on his nomination, and we ll be the ones that report it to the floor if that s their decision. we have the hearing because we have some of the health care jurisdiction, some important parts of it. and we would like to talk to him about especially those issues.