We cannot afford to have NIH's potential limited or even worse have its legs cut out from under it.

Cutting spending as they have proposed would mean slashing approximately 22 percent from programs next year.

Our communities continue to struggle with an opioid crisis and fentanyl is making it so much worse.

I want to mention an article published last week in Science revealing NIH's failure to discipline an investigator with a known documented history of sexual harassment.

It would mean a cut of over $10 billion in fiscal year 2024 alone for life-saving medical research at NIH.

Thank you for what you do and how you have devoted your careers.

It would be a chilling effect on the entire biomedical research enterprise.

Fortunately, here in the Senate, Ranking Member Capito and I are focused on writing a bipartisan Labor/HHS (Health and Human Services) spending bill to move our country forward.

I just want to comment also that when we look at this oversight, we want to make sure that we don't prompt scientists to move their experiments to countries where there are less stringent requirements.

I look forward to working with my colleagues to ensure NIH has the resources it needs across its 27 institutes and centers to continue the progress of recent years.

We have to utilize every tool in our toolbox, from stopping it from coming into our country to preventing its use to bringing an end to this national crisis.

I was proud to author the Next Generation Researchers Act with Senator Collins to improve NIH opportunities for new and early stage researchers.

I want to thank all of our committee members who attended for their thoughtful questions and thank you to all of you, Dr. Tabak, Dr. Gordon, Dr. Lowy, Dr. Hodes, and Dr. Volkow all for being here and sharing your expertise with us today.

I see my time has ended. I'm going to turn it to Senator Capito.

the juxtaposition of an act taken by the House Republicans last week that would result in drastic cuts to our public health programs and our research initiatives, and cuts that would undermine our Nation's competitiveness, as well as our…

It is very easy to play with statistics. It is very easy to scaremonger, which is what climate alarmism is all about.

Again, I think it is kind of grotesque, pretty arrogant.

We should have never gotten rid of our energy independence like we did because I think that has caused political problems across the spectrum.