Missouri’s senior U.S. Senator, Republican Josh Hawley, continues to speak out on several topics. He visited by phone recently with Missourinet affiliate KDRO in Sedalia, where he talked to News Director Charlie Richardson about funding for Ukraine, immigration issues, and prescription drug prices.
First, he talked about two bills he’s filed in the U.S. Senate designed to lower the cost of prescription drugs. One of those would cap insulin prices. Hawley said that prices have soared to the point that many people with diabetes can no longer afford insulin.
“Big Pharma has been making profit hand over fist on insulin by jacking up the prices — we ought to prevent that,” he said. “I’ve introduced legislation to cap it at $25 for a month-long supply of insulin. We ought to put that on the books and help out folks.”
Hawley is also sponsoring a bill that would make it illegal for the pharmaceutical industry to charge Americans more for prescription drugs than they charge patients in Canada and Europe.
“I would say, ‘listen! You can’t charge Missouri three times, four times more for an arthritis drug, for example, than you’re charging somebody over in France or Germany,’” he said.
Hawley also told KDRO that he wants the Federal Bureau of Investigation to launch a “full-scale effort” to find missing migrant children.
“That almost 350,000 children,” he said. “Think about that — 350,000 children unaccompanied, without their parents or any guardian, have come across that border, been smuggled, in most cases across that border by cartels, and what’s happened to them? They have been shipped off to child labor factories, they’re working in slaughterhouses. They’re working in factories overnight. They’re not getting paid, of course – all a violation of the law.”
Hawley has regularly stated that 85,000 of those 350,000 are unaccounted for.
Meanwhile, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas announced in a press conference last month that they’re building new pathways for legal immigration while cracking down on illegal entry.
But Hawley continued, blaming the Biden Administration’s immigration policy in large part for the fentanyl crisis in the U.S. He said the flow of drugs essentially makes Missouri a border state.
“Just in terms of fentanyl, think about this,” he said. “It is the number one cause of death in the state of Missouri for people between 18 and 45. Number one! And none of that is produced in the state of Missouri, for that matter.”
He continued, “meth, you know, which is in every community in our state, every school…comes across that southern border.”
Hawley suggests curbing illegal immigration will reduce the flow of fentanyl and other drugs into the U.S.
Finally, Hawley bashed the Biden Administration’s financial support of Ukraine. He accused President Biden of leading America towards another “endless conflict.”
“The people who love open borders and don’t want to pay American workers fair wages are more than happy to send those same American workers overseas to die in foreign wars – and to have those wars go on forever,” he said. “Same old thing we’re hearing out of Ukraine. Well, we’ll be there as long as it takes.”
Hawley finished by saying that the war between Russia and Ukraine is not a direct threat to American security.
“This is not the most important security challenge that we face, not by a longshot – and all the while our European allies are just free riding on us,” he said. “They’re just sandbagging. They’re not sending support to Ukraine like they should. They’re not the ones stepping up. This is their continent. It is their backyard. They ought to be taking the lead on this in Europe and we ought to be forcing them to do so.”
In past interviews, Hawley has stated that China is America’s biggest security threat and that we should help Taiwan as the island nation faces a potential military attack from Communist Chinese forces.
Copyright 2023, Missourinet.
