Click here to view Senator Cotton’s interview.

In case you missed it — Senator Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) and Senator Tim Kaine (D-Virginia) joined Bret Baier on “Common Ground” to discuss bipartisan legislation they introduced in the Senate that would help address drug shortages and vulnerabilities in the drug supply chain.

In part, Senator Cotton said:

“If you look at the supply chains that we have for some basic drugs in America, a lot of it goes back to China or other adversarial nations, our legislation would direct the government to take stock of where we're obtaining these prescription drugs, or in some cases, over the counter drugs or their precursor ingredients, to make sure that we don't have adversarial nations like China that control them, that could end up cutting them off in a moment of national crisis. I think many people were worried during the pandemic when we discovered how dependent we are on China, and they threatened to cut us off those drugs. And then you take the fact that one of the biggest purchasers of drugs in our federal government is the Department of Defense for our troops who need all those basic drugs.”

The Senator’s full interview may be found here and below.

Bret Baier: Joining us tonight, Arkansas, Republican Senator Tom Cotton and Virginia Democratic Senator Tim Kaine, thank you both for being here. I want to talk about your bill and that you're working on, but a couple of things quickly.

First, Senator Cotton today, you sent a letter about demanding records on border wall materials being preserved, saying you want accountability and transparency for the Department of Defense about its role in the disposal of excess border wall materials. What's the issue there? And how concerned about it are you?

Senator Cotton: Well, Brett, the Biden Administration, has had many of these border wall materials going back to the Trump administration. We don't want to see them rush to sell those materials. If, as we all anticipate, the Trump administration be using them. We just be selling them for just pennies on the dollar. We want them to actually explain what their next steps are, why there may be going forward these sales, and if they're unreasonable sales, we want to stop that so the Trump administration can save the taxpayer dollar, and what we anticipate will be finishing the border wall.

Bret Baier: Yeah, Senator Kaine about that. I mean, obviously we had an election, and immigration was one of the issues. And there's some people at home saying, you know, why get rid of this material if they're going to use it in the next administration to build more wall?

Senator Kaine: Yeah, Brett, I haven't, I haven't followed the issue of disposal of any of the material. We're expecting this to be a top priority next year, and we'll, we'll deal with that as it comes.

Bret Baier: And let me ask you this senator, Kaine, you know, you obviously were a vice-presidential nominee with Secretary Clinton, and we're in the aftermath of an election. Here is the Democratic Party having this kind of thought about the future right now. How do you describe it?

Senator Kaine: Yeah, look, we are having a significant discussion about the next few years. I'm not so much a Democrat. I'm a Virginia guy, so I'm very focused on Virginia. But I think If I could sum it up, the attitude now is advance everywhere we can together and defend everything we must.

Bret Baier: Let's talk about the common ground here, protecting our essential medicines Act. create interagency task force name drugs critical to health and safety, assess risk of drug supply shortages, among other things. Senator Kaine, this is important.

Senator Kaine: It's interesting. I'm on the HELP Committee. Tom is not but we're really tackling this as Armed Services Committee members, because we look at as a critical national security issue.

Bret Baier: And what is the national security aspect of it Senator Cotton?

Senator Cotton: Well, if you look at the supply chains that we have for some basic drugs in America, a lot of it goes back to China or other adversarial nations, our legislation would direct the government to take stock of where we're obtaining these prescription drugs, or in some cases, over the counter drugs or their precursor ingredients, to make sure that we don't have adversarial nations like China that control them, that could end up cutting them off in a moment of national crisis. I think many people were worried during the pandemic when we discovered how dependent we are on China, and they threatened to cut us off those drugs. And then you take the fact that one of the biggest purchasers of drugs in our federal government is the Department of Defense for our troops who need all those basic drugs.

Bret Baier: It's also a price issue. Here's the president elect today.

CLIP: The horrible middleman that makes more money, frankly, than the drug companies, and they don't do anything except they're a middleman. We're going to knock out the middleman. They are rich as hell. We're going to knock out the middleman. We're going to get drug costs down at levels that nobody has ever seen before.

Bret Baier: Does this all factor into that? Senator Kaine.

Senator Kaine: The pharma companies at least do the research and create the lifesaving treatments and cures. The managers in the middle often are more profitable than the pharmaceutical companies, but we haven't paid attention to them.

Bret Baier: Do you both see the prospect of working together in this new Congress with a new president in the common ground way you're working now?

Senator Cotton: Well, I certainly hope so. Brett, obviously, Tim and I have our disagreements on certain issues. Sometimes those issues are more high profile or prominent in the news, but when you're looking at things like the availability of life saving drugs for all Americans, or the readiness of our troops, that's something where we have common ground, and we all hope to be able to work together for the common good of the American people.

Senator Kaine: I completely agree. One little piece of the bills that Tom and I are promoting is just simple communication when pharmacies and pharmaceutical companies see an uptick in demand of a particular drug, we're asking them to share that with the FDA and others, so that we can see shortages before they develop. That will then enable us to use tools like the defense production Act and other tools to spur American production so that shortages never occur. This is good government stuff. There's no Dem’s or R’s in trying to stop drug shortages.