Politics & Government

Shelton Eye on the Beltway: Blumenthal on U.S. Drug Shortage

And, Himes speaks with constituents in Norwalk.

 

BLUMENTHAL: The senator spoke on the Senate floor on Tuesday about the importance of addressing the drug shortage crisis in the FDA Safety and Innovation Act.

"What illustrates this problem perhaps most dramatically are the faces and voices of the people in Connecticut and in every state around the country who suffer because of these drug shortages," he said. "They are your neighbors, your friends, my colleagues' constituents. They're coping with pain, anxiety, sadness, grief, anger and there are drugs available to them that would provide relief and remedy, and their docs can't get them because they are in shortage... We have a right to ask, what kind of nation allows patients to go without these drugs and forces doctors to make decisions about who needs them the most?"

Find out what's happening in Shelton-Derbywith free, real-time updates from Patch.

LIEBERMAN: The senator and Susan Collins, R-Maine pressed Secret Service Director Mark Sullivan at a Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing on Wednesday about the possibility of previous misconduct within the agency before the Cartagena scandal.

“This isn’t ‘Animal House.’ The mission of the Secret Service is too important to the nation for its agents to engage in risky behavior,” Lieberman said. Addressing Sullivan, he said, “Going forward you have to assume Cartagena was not the only case of serious misconduct. You need to put in place rules and procedures that will make sure this great agency won’t be subject again to the suspicions that many people now have, including us, about its culture of permissiveness."

Find out what's happening in Shelton-Derbywith free, real-time updates from Patch.

HIMES: The congressmen met with constituents at The Marvin Senior Community in Norwalk and discussed various topics, including Medicare, housing, health care reform and Social Security. He told the attendees that Congress should be doing a better job at addressing the housing crisis and that "they aren't doing the consumption that will move the economy along," according to Hour.

MURPHY: The congressman responded to Susan Bysiewicz's call for him to "stand with the middle class" and return $6,000 he received from JP Morgan‘s PAC towards his Senate campaign. He told CTNewsJunkie.com that when it comes to how "Wall Street does business," he is "proud" of his record.


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