mr. bennet: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent the judiciary committee be discharged from further consideration of s. res. 277 and the senate proceed to its immediate consideration. the presiding officer: the clerk will report. the clerk: s. res. 277, recognizing the religious and historical significance of the festival of duali. the presiding officer: is there objection to proceeding to the measure? without objection, the committee is discharged and the senate will proceed to the measure. mr. bennet: thank you, mr. president. i further ask that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to and the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with intervening action or debate. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. bennet: i ask unanimous consent the senate proceed to the consideration of s. res. 285, which was submitted earlier today. the presiding officer: the clerk will report. the clerk: s. res. 285, authorizing the committee on rules and administration to

mr. bennet: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from colorado. mr. bennet: mr. president, i will first say to the presiding officer what a joy to the see now that chair and welcome to the united states senate. i wanted to talk today about the drug quality and security act for a few minutes because at this moment of dysfunction in -- in the congress, we are at the brink of accomplishing something that we've not been able to do in the last 25 years, the last quarter of a century. this bill which we are about to send to the president reforms our drug distribution supply chain, making it more secure and safer for families. it puts us on a path to electronic interoperable tracing at the unit level for drugs. it also raises the bar for wholesale distributors around the country and weeds out bad actors who find loopholes in the system to stockpile drugs and create shortages. this bill cannot come soon enough. mr. president, our colorado pharmacies fill over 60 million prescriptions every single year, and the coloradans who take these prescriptions, just like people all

bennet? >> thank you, mr. chairman. thank you for being here today. as i watch this approach to local and state and government here, i hope as we go forward we do not lose sight of the fact that government does not do a great job with procurement, with i.t., or with customer service, and we're seeing that in spades. i hope is we use this as an occasion not just a point fingers, but how to improve things for the people going forward. i think that customer service element is an enormously important so we do not face the crisis of confidence senator mikulski talked about. that should be job number one, to figure out that people -- but the politics aside. whether people sitting at their kitchen table can decide and evaluate for themselves whether this is a better deal or not for them. in colorado, as you know, we set up our own exchange. one of the things i have been told is that people have to go through 20 pages to have a determination made about the medicaid eligibility before they can actually get access to the private marketplace. and there has been

mr. president. the chairman, the senator from iowa, as well as senator burr, senator bennet and others, have been working for at least two years on this form of legislation we call track and trace. it's been through the vetting. i think everybody's had a chance to read it, to make a suggestion about it. there have been many changes and adjustments to make sure it works. here's the problem. in the united states today, we have about 4 billion prescriptions written every ye year. we don't have a uniform system to track and trace these judge -- these drugs once they leave the manufacturer, which makes it easier for counterfeits and substandard products to enter the market and puts patients at risk. the laws governing the tracking of drugs haven't been updated since 1988. in the last two years alone, there have been three cases of counterfeit of vastin, a cancer drug being distributed in the u.s. to physicians and patients when the counterfeit did not contain any of the active ingredient. we've seen an increase in drug theft. we've got no way of knowing if and when these drugs are resold in the u.s. supply ch