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<\/p>\nWashington, DC…Well, I\u2019m deeply honored to welcome the members of the Congressional Black Caucus to the White House. We\u2019re going to have a lot of meetings over the years, and I very much appreciate you being here. Throughout my campaign, I pledged to focus on improving conditions for African American citizens. This means more to me than anybody would understand or know. Every American child has a right to grow up in a safe community, to attend great schools, to graduate with access to high-paying jobs. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
America has spent trillions and trillions of dollars overseas. I guess — I heard just recently in the Middle East we\u2019ve spent as of about two months ago $6 trillion — $6 trillion, and you know where we are over there — while neglecting the fate of American children in cities like Baltimore and Chicago and Detroit. <\/p>\n
African American citizens have given so much to this country. They\u2019ve fought in every war since the Revolution, and they\u2019ve fought hard. They\u2019ve lifted up the conscience of our nation in the march toward civil rights, enriched the soul of America — and their faith and courage. And they\u2019ve advanced our country in the fields of science, arts and medicine.<\/p>\n
Elijah Cummings, who was here about two weeks ago, who I happen to think is a terrific man — I don\u2019t know if he\u2019ll say that about me, but I will tell you, I really liked him a lot. And we were talking about drugs and prescription drugs and the costs. And you go to Europe, you go to Canada, you go to other countries and you buy them for a fraction of what you pay in this country. And that\u2019s been a very big subject for him, and it\u2019s a subject for me that is very important. And we\u2019re going to either do it in healthcare — which I think we\u2019re going to do it in healthcare — or we\u2019re going to do it separately. <\/p>\n
But we\u2019re going to bid on drug prices, and we\u2019re going to try and have the lowest prices anywhere in the world, from really the highest. And that\u2019s not only the drugs, it\u2019s prescription drugs. But you go out to stores and you go even — in any community, rich or poor community, and you look at the kind of drug prices that we\u2019re paying and it\u2019s really unfair what\u2019s happened in our country.<\/p>\n
So we\u2019re going to be instituting a very, very strong bidding process. We\u2019ll probably need some legislation, but we\u2019re going to do it regardless. We have to do it. And we\u2019re going to get drug prices way down, way down. Some people think it\u2019s as important as the healthcare measure, because people are being ripped off when they need their — they need drugs, they need prescription drugs. And we\u2019re going to take care of that situation.<\/p>\n
So again, I very much appreciate you being here. It\u2019s a tremendous honor for me. And we\u2019re going to work on different things, and we\u2019re going to see if we can get a lot accomplished.<\/p>\n
And with that, let\u2019s get going. And thank you all very much.<\/p>\n
END
\n3:13 P.M. EDT<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Washington, DC…Well, I\u2019m deeply honored to welcome the members of the Congressional Black Caucus to the White House. We\u2019re going to have a lot of meetings over the years, and I very much appreciate you being here. Throughout my campaign, I pledged to focus on improving conditions for African American citizens. This means more to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13330,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_cbd_carousel_blocks":"[]","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,5,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35962","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-government","category-news","last_archivepost"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/whitehouselogo200.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35962","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35962"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35962\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}