Courtney: Lower Drug Prices

Yesterday, I was proud to join my House colleagues in voting to pass to the Lower Drug Costs Now Act (H.R. 3), which finally allows for Medicare to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies for lower, market-rate prices. These new, fairer prices would be available to everyone, including those on private plans. H.R. 3 also directs the penalization of drug manufacturers if they increase the price of their drug faster than inflation, creates a $2,000 out-of-pocket cap on prescription drugs for Medicare part D beneficiaries, and invests billions of dollars in savings by including historic expansions of vision, dental, and hearing coverage in Medicare for the first time.

The Lower Drug Costs Now Act takes significant steps to ensure Americans don’t continue to receive the short end of the stick from pharmaceutical companies, and eases the burden that is the cost of medicine in this country. I want to thank the thousands of constituents from across the second district who have reached out to my office and advocated fiercely for this cause. Your voices and stories are what brought this bill, the most significant legislation on health care of the 116th Congress, across the finish line in the House.

Preserving the Promise of the Post-9/11 G.I. Bill

Since the start of the 116th Congress, the House has been working hard, and on a bipartisan basis, to tackle several priorities on behalf of the American people. On Wednesday, the House came together in an overwhelming bipartisan fashion to pass the final National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) conference report for Fiscal Year (FY) 2020 – the final version of the NDAA that was negotiated between the House and Senate. Included in the final NDAA conference report is my bipartisan provision to block a Department of Defense (DOD) plan that would have restricted servicemembers with greater than sixteen years of service from transferring their Post-9/11 G.I. Bill benefits to eligible family members as part of the final NDAA.

I was proud to help pass the Post-9/11 G.I. Bill during my first term as a member of Congress. The bill was meant to honor the service and sacrifice of our veterans by providing them and their loved ones with educational opportunities. The DOD’s plan to restrict our longest-serving servicemembers from transferring those G.I. Bill benefits falls far short of honoring their sacrifice, and would have wronged those vets who are willing and able to continue their service. I’ve strongly opposed these restrictions ever since the plan was first announced back in July of 2018, leading a letter last year alongside 83 of my colleagues in the House to former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis urging the DOD to reconsider the decision.

This past June, during the House Armed Service Committee’s consideration of the FY 2020 NDAA, I offered an amendment to prevent implementation of this new restriction, which gained the bipartisan support of my colleagues on the committee. After my amendment was adopted to the House’s final version of the bill back in June, I led a second letter to alongside 29 of my colleagues from the committee to then-Acting Secretary Esper, urging him to delay implementation of their decision until both the House and Senate had fully weighed in on the issue by completing its work on the NDAA in its entirety. Shortly thereafter, we received a response confirming that implementation of this new rule would be delayed until Congress completed work on this year’s NDAA.

With a Senate vote next week and the President’s signature, my amendment will become law. Ending this plan once and for all is the right thing to do, and I am grateful for the bipartisan support that has made it possible.

A Historic Investment in Our Armed Forces, Servicemembers & Veterans

The NDAA is critically important to our national defense, our servicemembers and military families around the globe, and to eastern Connecticut. I’ve been proud to lead the Seapower & Projection Forces Subcommittee this year—my first year as Chairman of the bipartisan panel—to ensure that we carried forward some of the most important priorities in support of our Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force projection forces. The NDAA we passed Wednesday includes many of the priorities I fought for. In addition to fully supporting the recently announced Block V submarine contract, this agreement provides full support for the tenth ‘option’ boat to address the needs of our combatant commanders. The agreement also endorses the subcommittee’s work to address the future of our domestic sealift capabilities, which are the backbone of our nation’s ability to respond around the world.

Members from both sides of the aisle, and in both chambers of Congress, worked together to ensure that the bill also addressed critical issues that will improve the lives of servicemembers and their families. This year’s NDAA includes the hard-fought provision for paid parental leave for our federal employees, a great step in achieving parity between members of the military and the civilian workforce that supports them. It also repeals the ‘Widow’s Tax,” a goal that’s been sought for two decades, which will bring long overdue fairness to our military survivors and families.

The final agreement reflects broad, bipartisan support for many of the priorities that I and my committee have been fighting for on behalf of our servicemembers and veterans, and it invests in our nation’s capabilities on, above, and under the seas. Proud that we got the job done on a bipartisan, and bicameral basis.

Modernizing our Nation’s Agriculture Workforce

In response to a growing labor crisis that has begun to threaten our nation’s agriculture industry and the livelihoods of hard working farmers across the country, this week the House passed the Farm Workforce Modernization Act, a bipartisan bill that seeks to address this looming crisis by helping to stabilize the agriculture industry’s workforce. As a diminishing supply of U.S. workers participate in farm labor, American farms have become increasingly reliant upon foreign workers to meet labor demands. By creating a new pathway to legal status for undocumented citizens working within the U.S. agriculture industry and expanding temporary visa programs to non-seasonal farms, this bill both stabilizes and modernizes our nation’s agriculture sector, helps preserve rural heritage, and ensures farmers can meet their labor needs well into the future. It’s important to note that the bill is being supported by our hardworking farmers, themselves – including Oakridge Dairy Farm in Ellington.

Eastern Connecticut is home to some of the most productive dairy farms in the country – it’s part of our heritage in New England. Shortages in labor availability for them can cause ripple effects across our entire economy, and only serves to increase America’s reliance on foreign food. We’ve got to find more ways to work together to get things done in Washington, and the Farm Workforce Modernization Act is another example of the critical work we can accomplish here to help solve the real problems facing our agriculture industry. On behalf of Connecticut’s hard-working dairy farmers, I was proud to help pass this bipartisan bill.

Advocating for our Vietnam Submarine Veterans

Blue Water veterans have waited decades for action and fairness from the Veterans Administration (VA), and now, following passage of the Blue Water Navy Vietnam Veterans Act into law earlier this year, applications have opened for Blue Water veterans who now may be entitled to a presumption of service connection for conditions related to Agent Orange exposure. To learn more, visit my Blue Water Veterans resource page online.

As we approach the effective date of January 1, 2020, however, the VA is not yet prepared to include submarines in the ‘ship locator tool’ that VA employees will use to confirm eligibility for affected veterans. This means that our submarine veterans who were exposed to Agent Orange during the Vietnam War will have to wait even longer to receive care under this new law.
I’m committed to ensuring that our submariners are treated on parity with their shipmates who served aboard surface ships to the greatest extent possible, and this week I led a bipartisan letter signed by 45 of my colleagues in the House to Acting Secretary of the Navy Thomas Modly urging him to give this issue the highest possible consideration.