Katie Porter: “Mr. Speaker, our section of the omnibus bill continues Congress' initiative to terminate duplicative and ineffective…”

“Mr. Speaker, our section of the omnibus bill continues Congress' initiative to terminate duplicative and ineffective programs. There are 13 new terminations in addition to the 100 that we achieved last year. We have frozen or reduced many administrative accounts. At the same time, we have increased funding for programs that work for people and that are a high priority for our country. For example, with respect to biomedical research through the National Institutes of Health, we have increased spending by $820 million, a 6.5-percent increase, and $371 million above the President's request. We have in that section of the bill preserved the principle that science, not politics, should decide how the money is best spent, there is no earmarking in the bill by disease and no line item for AIDS. However, we appropriate directly to the Office of AIDS Research to support that important research. The bill preserves NIH and gives it a substantial increase, because basic research can only be organized and supported through government.”