Well, we are not going to let any time go unused.

Senator Specter, I appreciate your leadership and focus on this issue, and hope my testimony will be informative.

Thank you for your extraordinary efforts to provide increased funding for biomedical research through the NIH.

When I was elected to the Senate in 1980, the first committee I chose was Appropriations because of its power, candidly, in bringing money back to the State.

We took the lead in increasing it to $30 billion, some years as much as $3.5 billion added.

But then with the stimulus package, the amendment, which I offered, got into the bill for $10 billion extra.

I look for a competitive bidding at the end of the rainbow, and I am going to be pushing hard to land it for Pittsburgh in the 7,000 jobs.

I was in support of the Government-owned, contractor-operated.

Since 2004, when I chaired this subcommittee, with the joinder of Senator Harkin, who is now the chair, we appropriated $6.4 billion to deal with the vaccine problem.

We do not get caught like we got caught on Katrina, do not get caught with a problem with swine flu or any of these other kinds of problems.

We are not going to spend any money which is not really necessary as a matter of public policy and public welfare.

What we are talking about is smallpox, anthrax, ebola virus, botulism, and others where there could be a very serious public health problem.

I want to hear more than whether you are impressed with them. I want to know if anybody else is doing what they are doing.

In my first year in the Senate, the NIH budget was $3.6 billion, but when I became chairman... the NIH budget was $12 billion.

There has been an incredible impact on biomedicine.

The additional funding that was provided in the last year, the additional $10 billion, has allowed us now to take up some of those projects that otherwise would not have been funded.

So something like 70,000 jobs.

I think it definitely requires that we have a facility that the Government has sufficient control over.