MASSDEVICE ON CALL — House majority leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) called for his fellow Republicans to join forces in defeating the ever-looming medical device tax in a vote that may hit the House floor as early as next week.
A House vote on Rep. Erik Paulsen’s highly anticipated tax repeal bill may come next week, Cantor told colleagues in an in-House memo detailing the spring schedule.
"This tax, to fund a flawed law, will have a negative impact on jobs in the medical device industry," Cantor wrote in a memo obtained by MassDevice.com. "Regardless of the outcome of the Supreme Court’s decision on the constitutionality of ObamaCare, we should all be able to agree on Erik Paulsen’s bill to repeal the medical device tax."
The bill had 238 co-sponsors at last count Tuesday evening, more than enough to pass through the House, but few Democrats had lent their signature to the repeal measure. Rep. Bill Owens (D-N.Y.) was the latest Democrat to co-sponsor Paulsen’s bill, joining less than a dozen of his peers in doing so.
Without blue support the repeal movement may flop in the Senate, where not a single Democrat has signed on to a companion bill.
The House is also expected to vote today on its version of the FDA user fee reauthorization bill, which would give the FDA continued authority to charge device and drug makers for agency review of new products. The companion bill in the Senate passed in a near-unanimous vote last week.
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