Political Quotes

“Let me pick up a couple of the themes that you hit upon. One of them, continuing on with research in this area of this part of the country, and certainly in the San Francisco Bay area, where I represent, health care research is huge. It is an extraordinarily big part of the economy, both the research and then the spin-offs from it. We call this the biotech. And this is almost entirely health care- related biotech. We also have the biofuels, again coming out of research. The Republican continuing resolution reduces funding for the National Institutes of Health by $1.6 billion. We are talking about 25,000 health-related research projects that will either stop, be delayed, or pushed off the track--25,000. We're talking about things that are really serious to us: heart disease, diabetes, cancer, all of the things that affect every American and literally everybody in this world. The research would be slowed down, stopped, and in some cases terminated as a result of the feeding frenzy that went on here on this floor where more than 400 amendments were considered with very, very little thought. Our colleague Betty Sutton talked about, yes, cuts, but be smart with your cuts. Don't just take whatever is on your mind, whatever the latest sound bite is, because it may have a very detrimental effect. You are looking at in this case the National Institutes of Health. Human health. Our well-being as Americans; and that means 25,000 research jobs would be terminated.…”