Arizona Capitol Times Your Inside Source for Arizona Government, Politics and Business

The stagging price of prescription drugs has put Arizona patients in a corner — too often forcing them to decide between buying the medications they need or affording the necessities of life like rent, groceries and utilities.

Immigration policy isn’t charity nor should it be viewed as such. Legalizing people living here illegally is just one step toward helping our economy compete.

My children are growing up in a world with new climate extremes that I did not face as a child. Climate change threatens my children’s health, and that’s something I can’t stand by and let happen.

According to a study conducted by Avik Roy and Gregg Girvan of the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity (FREOPP), Big Pharma’s abuse of the patent system around biologic drugs, such as Humira, cost American patients and taxpayers an additional $5 billion between 2015 and 2020. Without congressional action to hold brand name drug companies accountable, the report estimates this anti-competitive behavior around just this one class of drug will cost the American people another $25 billion by the end of the decade.

Intellectual property protections are the foundation for ongoing efforts to provide timely and essential Covid protection.

Next year, we will continue to ask the governor and legislators for small investments to ensure the public is protected adequately by troopers around Arizona.

The PRO Act currently has 47 cosponsors in the United States Senate. Arizonans should be proud that Senators Kyrsten Sinema and Mark Kelly are not among those 47.

It is now incumbent on Congress to stand up for utility ratepayers across the nation and say “no” to indirect tax hikes on our families and small businesses. I urge Arizona’s Senators to vote “no” on any unjust and unreasonable increase to the U.S. corporate tax rate.

Just how large a human footprint can the Southwest accommodate, and for how long? Rank-and-file Arizonans seem to have a better grasp of ecological and economic realities than their leaders. We should look to them for answers, and not to our reality-blind politicians.

While the previously outlined Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework may be a necessary step toward passing a major climate bill, it does not go far enough in addressing air pollution and the climate crisis.