[background noises] the ways and Means Committee will now come to order. Good morning, today we will consider the historic u. S. Mca transforming agreement that creates a new High Water Mark u. S. Trade deals moving forward. The implementing bill before us is the result of many months of negotiations and indeed more than a year between House Democrats and the ambassador robert who worked with us honorably every time we met. And im very proud of the outcome of that we have reached. When we assume the majority this year, we were asked to consider a renegotiated nafta that had structural flaws in a number of areas including enforcements, labor rights, the environment, and access to medicines. Let me start with enforcement. Which was the crux of this agreement. As ive noted many times over the past year, i did not vote for the original nafta, the chief reason was a lack of enforceability. In the past 25 years, weve seen the shortcoming of the original agreements, much of which comes down t
Speak the ways and Means Committee will now come to order good morning we will consort considered a historic usmca the high watermark with trade deals moving forward it is the result of more than one year House Democrats and the ambassador light heiser who worked with us every time we met. Im very proud of the outcome we have reached. When we assume the majority this year we were asked to consider a renegotiated nafta in a number of areas including enforcement the environment and access to medicines that we start with enforcement as noted many times i did not vote for the original nafta and the chief reason was the lack of enforceability. The past 25 years we have seen the shortcoming much of which comes down to lack of enforcement in my view the improvements to the usmca finally makes the agreement enforceable n by preventing a country to block a nation dispute settlement attempt. Nafta has been symbolic and over 25 years there have been 39 petitions filed with zero enforcement action
Seriously considered. Senator mccain has already referenced them. One is i think we have to take a hard look at overhead. The army but not just the army but the military across the board, all of the services to include department of defense are very very Large Organization with a big bureaucracy with a significant overhead. A second is acquisition. As already previously mentioned, theres a considerable amount of cost and in many cases waste in the acquisition process. We need to get that under control. And the third and final piece that i think is worth taking a look at theres a wide variety of emerging technologies that could in the outyears could lend itself to automated processes and reducing either manpower or manpower costs, compensation cost over time. Thats three big areas that would want to lock at if confirmed. We have russia creating a looming threat in europe, we have the pacific and chinas expansion or i should say increased activity there. We have the ongoing war in the mi
I gave them my Insurance Information and they came back and they said, we dont know. I would like to know how common that is and what is being done to try to let folks actually know what something costs. I might add, i had at the time a high deductible, so it was an important question about my outofpocket costs. The second question is Medicare Part d, when i noted it in the biography, mr. White was involved with in 2003, has a provision prohibiting the government from negotiating prices with the drug companies. And my question is, why is that still in the law . You want to take that one, ed . Why dont you start and ill do the first one. The second one real quick. The first one was, why cant they tell me what the price is . Like i said, forget about the email. Ask them what a price is and its like getting trade secrets out of cuba, right . Its next to impossible. What were seeing is that what the price is and what i owe are two different questions, right . So if i have coverage, i think