beyond the site best to make a phone call and say shut that down until we are right and we certainly can't do that. the osha law is very weak and it hasn't been amended since any substantive way since 1970. >> as a former member of the house representing a very rural district of iowa and as a senator representing a lot of small towns and communities, over the years i have heard story after story of osha inspectors coming out and nitpicking on something they find some little thing and we kind of hear all of these horror stories, and some of them we've tried to track down. it's very hard to do. but address yourself to that. i sure you've been around long enough and have her all of this, blight

the presiding officer: the senator from alabama. mr. shelby: mr. president, i'll be brief. first of all, i want to thank the republican leader, senator mcconnell, for his kind words. also i want to thank my friend, the majority leader, senator reid, for helping us bring us where we are today. but more than that, i want to commend senator dodd, the chairman of the banking committee, who i've worked with for years and years.

we have worked can exceedingly e on many issues dealing with the banking committee. what we're bringing to the floor now is something very complex, very far-reaching. the idea that something should be too big to fail is very important to me. nothing should be too big to fail, in my judgment, in this country. and i want to commend senator dodd. in our negotiations, we have reached some assurances in that he has and his staff have made some recommendations that we like. and we made some they like. i think we made real progress on that. i know we have to seal it, but i think that senator dodd is working in good faith on that. but we've got the derivatives title and we've got the consumer

products deal. and we haven't been able to resolve those yet. i hope we will on the floor of the senate. we moved to a new forum, and it's going to be a very important debate in the weeks ahead here, because this is very, very important to the american people. a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from connecticut. mr. dodd: mr. president, let me begin by thanking the majority leader for his work on this. and let me thank the minority leader as well. this has been a bit acrimonious over the last ten days or so as we tried to get to the floor,th bill. and of course i want to thank richard shelby. he and i, as he points out, have been working together over the last 37 months during my stewardship of the banking committee that i inherited in january of 2007. i noted the other day there's some 42 measures that have been brought out of our committee. 37 of them have become the law of the land. this is a good result.

we're now on the bill which the american people want us to be on. this is an important issue. we had the headlines of the hearings here yesterday involving mortgage deals; the other headline about greece and its debt, its bonds were sinking, causing economic problems in europe, potentially here. these problems are huge, mr. president. and as senator shelby has said and i've said over and over again, that is complex area of law we're talking about. and it has to be gotten right. we've had very good conversations on a number of issues going back over many, many weeks. we both shared that we again have institution that is become too big to fail with the implicit guarantee that the federal government will bail them out. i'm satisfied that our bill does that already, but i appreciate there are others who would like to see it tighter, think we can do something to make this better and more workable. i'm anxious to hear that. i know my colleague from

california, barbara boxer, has ideas she would like toi mentiom alabama, he has issues he'd like to raise. we've had great conversations as two people with goodwill can have. we're going to have a very busy couple of weeks coming up now. there are a lot of members who have very strong feelings about this bill. our job, my job, our job will be to see to it that people have a chance to offer their amendments, to debate them and to go through that process. i may sound pretty old-fashioned, mr. president in, this regard. as i pointed out last night, i first had a vow to this chamber as i sat here in a blue suit as a page, watching lyndon johnson sit where you are, mr. president and watching mike mansfield and everett dirksen, listening to debates on civil rights in the 1960's when this chamber in

difficult moments worked together for the achievements of our country. i have great reverence for this institution and i want to see it work as our founding fathers intended it to that where you have important debate that, we work together. and that's what i intend to do as the manager of this bill, to make sure that each and every one of my colleagues, whether they sit on this aisle or that side of the aisle, we're fall this chamber together to try to improve the quality of life for the people who have been so badly hurt, the homes lost, the jobs that have evaporated, the retirement accounts that have disappeared from people. they want to see us work together to get a job done to make a difference for our country. and i firmly believe that we can do that. and i will do my very, very best, i say to my friend from alabama, i say to the minority leader as i said to the majority leader, to act with fairness, to work together to try to resolve matters so we can have a good outcome on this bill. obviously we can't predict that. i know there will be some who want to make this a big fight, that that's a great, great issue

maybe for the day or the week. do you it, and who wins, who loses here. that's a great story. but this is not an athletic contest we're involved in. it is a decision to try to put our country on a far more sound footing of security. i look forward to working with senator shelby. we're good friends. i admire him immensely. he understands the job of being a chairman. i'm determined to get the job right, mr. president. i encourage our colleagues who have ideas and amendments to come forward, share them with us. we're going to set up shop over the weekend to make sure we're there. we've so* we've got ideas we can consider, accept, maybe modify, make it work right. from that spirit, we can do a good job here and we can leave this chamber at the end of this congress knowing that we confronted a serious problem and stepped up to the best of our ability to try and solve it for the people we seek to represent.

with that, mr. president, i thank the majority leader and his staffer and others for their work. i thank senator shelby and his work. again, this conversation will continue. we've got a lot of work to do. it's been very worthwhile and very productive over these last number of weeks, and we intend to keep it in that forum. and i thank the minority leader as well. and the republican conference. i know it must have been probably a healthy, good, vibrant conversation for the last hour and a half in there. but even those who question whether or not we can do this, i want this institution to get back again to the idea of listening to each other, debating the issues, taking our

the hearing of the subcommittee is called to order. today we're having a hearing on antibiotic resistance and the threat to public health and i will first recognize myself for

an opening statement. this is a very serious public health concern and i know it's an issue of great interest to many members of the house of representatives. antibiotics are among the most embattled medical innovations of the 20th century, the first discovered in the late 1920's antibiotics became part of routine treatments to combat bacterial infections in the 1940's and one of the main contributors and the decline of infectious diseases. these were suddenly curable with administration of these wonder drugs and, in fact, the cdc lists control over infectious disease as one of the top-10 great public health achievements of the last century and mentions anti micro bills as crucial to that accomplishment. but bacterial are living organisms and they can and will rotate to resist drugs and now

find ourselves in a situation where our shriver over infectious diseases is in jeopardy. more and more bacteria proving to be resistant to the antibiotics currently on the market and impartially these resistant diseases are among the most chronic illnesses and the population including respiratory diseases such as ammonia, food related diseases including the coli and salmonella, and hospital required infection such as methicillin-resistant staphylococcus or more commonly known as mrsa and mrsa in particular is migrating out of a health care setting and can be found in the community posing a threat to americans. in newspapers across the nation report on the dangers and prevalence of these bacteria and my signature is a we had a number of schools closed a few years ago after children diagnosed with mrsa and some houseflies for weeks.

i'm sure everyone remembers the scare not long ago in the house of representatives when mrsa was found in the staff jim. the consequences of these antibiotic resistant bacteria is deadly. 2005 this cdc reported that 95,000 americans contacted mrsa and over 18,000 died as a result of that disease including young and otherwise healthy patients. many in the medical community believe that mrsa might not be as big a threat as some of the other antibiotic resistance resistance diseases and are still are some that can treat mrsa and for others like -- there are few options and as articles have been, this was a concern among the wounded troops and iraq. 35 percent of those infections responded to only one antibiotic on the market and 4 percent were resistant to all of our current

drug. it is horrifying to me to thank our soldiers can survive a war only to then succumbed to a bacterial infection we are powerless to treat. intriguing is highly resistant infections physicians have to prescribe more expensive and older and less commonly used antibiotics beckham cause serious side effects including nerve and kidney damage. patients end up hospitalized for logger times and often suffer recurring infections that's in the back to the dr. time and again not surprisingly, they tend to be expensive not to mention the threat they pose to all who come in contact with the patience and as high this year it is important today. an eager to hear from our witnesses about the problems with antibiotic resistant bacteria paul but undressing is and i know both of you are engaged in some research that will help us tackle antibiotic resistance and the most possible

way. i want to welcome the committee and i apologize for the fact we have destroyed. i know one or both of you mentioned catching a plane and i don't know the situation is with that but for now i will recognize our ranking member mr. shimkus for opening statement. >> thank you mr. chairman, antimicrobial drugs are effective and life-saving when used correctly we know that bacteria can quickly evolve and become resistant to drugs and resistance is already concern and our communities particularly in the hospital setting when numerous deaths occurred as a result of resistance. i'm glad we have our panel before us in the cdc and nih to discuss roe of the federal government particularly with a u.s. interagency task force on antibiotic resistance. i look for to the hearing has more on the progress made and what my next by from the task force's update action plan expected to be released later this year. a devil is believed crucial

component is providing industry incentives every last remark that encourages development of more anti microbial drugs. any new measures have turned away from the new antimicrobrials because of increased incentives to develop drugs and other therapeutic areas and the uncertainty of the marketplace. as members we should work hard to break down the barriers that occurred like extended the exclusivity for new antibiotics and economic incentives such as tax credit. unfortunately the $27 billion tax on a drug industry and the health reform law will have negative effect and only serve and not encourage more development of antibiotics. perhaps that is in the case with this is another example of why we must hold hearings on the new health reform law. last week raised issues with your problems. pre-existing conditions to cover

for children, individuals who don't qualify for the new high-risk pools, families being forced into medicaid, premiums going to rise on average of $2,100 for those on the individual market and being a will to drop coverage and avoid penalties after three months and one day. and this week we are the have two questions. the majority repeatedly said health care spending would decrease and the president pledged to the american people cost of the town, not up as a result of health reform. yet cms release records a national health care expectations expenditures will increase by 311 billion, making health care 21% of gdp. should we believe the cms i jury experts? where the majority of their bill? now law. are the five wonders of a 5.1 billion in cuts to medicare and realistic and unsustainable? as the report claims. will the cuts drive 15% of hospitals in the red and forced to close their doors?

how with this jeopardize access to care for seniors? what does the hospital committee say about this? are 50 percent of seniors will going to lose their medicare advantage plans? 1,014,000,000 low-wage working americans have their employer insurance dropped forcing them to medicaid? how will the state medicaid plans handle these new populations and cost? lisa the questions being raised and the real concerns and fears coming from the public. of this committee and this congress cannot bury our heads in the sand and pretend they still exist in this massive health reform law. chairman villone i asked before and hope in german waxman is here i hope we have hearings on the implementation of this and address some of these problems that we should start moving to fix it before they actually become problems. identify quite a few of them. with that mr. chairman i yield back my time.

>> they give. chairman waxman is recognized for opening statement. >> thank you mr. chairman. we need to debate the healthcare bill to review its implementation but we ought to be able to chew gum and walk the same time here is not what two make much difference if you have health insurance or not if you're going to die from something that could have been prevented from an antibiotic and we're seeing more and more antibiotic resistance. the revolution of antibiotics started with penicillin in 1927 and has been a major accomplishment and the health care world and has led to many people surviving things that might have cost their lives before we had antibiotics skin infections could creek turned tail and childbirth could be a death sentence for both mother and baby and superficial wounds could deteriorate rapidly often resulting in