Political Quotes

“I rise, reluctantly, to oppose this bill. First of all, I want to express to Gabriella Miller's family my sincere sympathies. We all want to fund more research to fight pediatric disease. Nothing could be a more worthy objective. If we could only reverse the cuts that this House has adopted under Republican leadership, the National Institutes of Health could make an even greater amount of progress in understanding and treating so many different devastating diseases for children and others. This bill was never heard in committee. We never had a chance to have witnesses come forward and talk about it or debate how best to achieve the bill's stated goals. That is why many of us think it is more a statement than a credible proposal, especially when you look at the Republican House majority's record on biomedical research funding. It is a dismal one. They wrote and passed a bill which would have significantly cut NIH. They supported sequestration, which similarly reduced the NIH budget by nearly $2 billion in 2013 alone. And now this bill comes along, where they claim to provide NIH with about $13 million a year for pediatric research. That is a miniscule amount compared to the funding for pediatric research NIH lost due to Republican budget cuts and sequestration. The way we usually handle NIH is the Appropriations Committee issues a bill appropriating money for NIH. They can do that. If we increase the money for NIH, they can do that.…”