New & notable legislation

The Patriot Post

Lobbyists for major drug manufacturers racked up a $19-million tab in the last 12 months, with much of that money going toward quashing legislation that would speed generic drugs to market. Currently, major drug manufacturers offer producers of generics lucrative licensing arrangements and large payoffs to keep generic drugs off the market for a time. A bill in the Senate would ban this practice, known as “reverse payments,” but the legislation is now stalled. Legislators now are trying to come up with a solution that will ban anticompetitive settlements without putting a stop to the kinds of arrangements that benefit consumers.

An energy bill has been stalled in conference over differences in how the House and Senate view ethanol. The House version taxes oil to subsidize ethanol production, while the Senate version mandates an increase in production to 30 billion gallons annually by 2020, and neither chamber likes the other’s approach. What is really a mystery, though, is why they all can’t just agree that ethanol is already wreaking havoc on corn prices and water supplies (ethanol production requires massive amounts of water). On top of that, ethanol doesn’t exactly live up to its billing for performance. For this bill to stall permanently would be a blessing.