Tom Harkin

I'd like to have some sort of satisfaction, or some feeling, positive feeling, that NIH is pivoting a little bit on this and saying, 'What is causing this? Why?'

There's an estimate out there that, from 2010 to 2050, the Medicare and Medicaid costs of Alzheimer's will total--ready for this one?--about $20 trillion.

As long as I'm chairman, we never will.

I don't have any problem with the $500 million, but I----

We've got to make some pretty tough decisions, too.

We're going to have some real problems in education, meeting our needs in higher education.

The fact that the President's budget was able to come up with a $1 billion increase for NIH is something that--we should all, sort of, credit the administration with their vision for science.

I think, has really been the great leader on this one.

This whole CAN that we put into the healthcare reform bill was a singular effort by Senator Specter.

It seems to me that we ought to be funding NIH a lot more aggressively than we are.

Do we have to do anything legislatively, Dr. Collins?

Last year President Obama vowed to find, quote, "a cure for cancer in our time."

I am of the opinion that we need to do more at NIH.

We wanted to keep people employed.

As I've often pointed out, zero-to-one is an infinite increase.

I mean, from prevention we know what smoking leads to, and all the diseases it leads to, and the cost to society.

That could be phenomenal.

Let us work together. Let us find out. That doesn't sound--this shouldn't be. It should be higher.

I look at a jobs bill as an investment.

We can't just respond to something simply because it is popular in the press right now.

I think all of us are quite concerned about this situation.

How can you argue on the one hand that it is okay for a kid to borrow to go to college, but it is not all right to borrow to make sure that there is a college for the kid to go to?

We are borrowing too much from our kids and grandkids. We have a terrible deficit problem, debt problem.

The jobs crisis in education is real. This is not something 'maybe if.' It is happening right now, and it is real.

AACC urges enactment of legislation containing an 'Education Jobs Fund,' as in the legislation introduced today by Senator Harkin.