Cory Booker FLIPS VOTE, Joining Bernie Sanders' Drug Bill

TYT contributor Ryan Grim () reports from Capitol Hill on Senator Cory Booker (DNJ) deciding to change his position on legislation that would allow the U.S. to import pharmacuticals at a reduced price from Canada. Senator Booker infamously voted against this bill, despite bipartisan support ranging from Senator Bernie Sanders (IVT) to Senator Ted Cruz (RTX), and has flipped his vote due to public pressure.

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Ryan Grim's reported in The Huffington Post:

Back in mid-January, while Democrats were still recovering from the shock of the presidential election, 13 Democrats cast a dead-of-night vote that in previous years would have gone largely unnoticed.

It was against an amendment from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) that directed a Senate committee to write legislation allowing for the re-importation of cheaper prescription drugs from Canada. Perhaps the most prominent of the baker’s dozen was Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), who just the day before had given controversial and impassioned testimony against Attorney General-nominee Jeff Sessions, at the time a fellow senator from Alabama.

The backlash caught Booker and his colleagues by surprise, and in many ways it presaged the furious energy that would soon be unleashed by progressives against both Trump and elected Democrats unwilling to stand up to him. It was a sign that things had changed in Washington and that standard operating Democratic procedure would no longer be acceptable.

The memo has been received. On Tuesday, Booker will join with Sanders at a press conference on Capitol Hill to announce his support for a drug re-importation bill.

From a policy angle, Booker has previously been open to the idea of re-importing drugs from Canada and even voted that same night for a measure aimed at lowering drug costs. But politically, activists have long considered him to be a reliable ally of Big Pharma, which is a dominant industry in New Jersey. Thus, his break with the industry at a public event with Sanders is meaningful politically. If the goal of the resistance has been to stiffen the spines of Democrats, it’s working.

READ MORE from Ryan Grim's reporting on this turn of events for The Huffington Post:

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