Tom Harkin

There is a huge opportunity here to invest in leadership, and that would cure many of the problems that ail us.

I'm glad to hear you say that.

You can't guess at what is important. You need to know what is happening.

We are concerned about that cut in the base.

Expanding access to high quality early childhood programs is one of the best investments we can make.

We in Congress, especially on this subcommittee, and the Education Department have a special responsibility to make sure that the money is used wisely.

Do you want to improve math scores? Do some music.

I'm still wrestling with that. I still don't understand that.

So again, I'm back to square one. Is this a fair allotment of money?

It's not just geared toward the American people, and so with all of that research we have to keep thinking about, what's that translational research, what's it going to translate into?

Do you have any idea about when we might be able to really get some body of evidence or something that we could rely on to say for prevention, we ought to be doing this and that pre-natal care and pregnant women ought to take certain…

We have to be cognizant of this issue and do our best to answer those problems.

I know the statistics on cancer. I've fought as hard as anyone for more money for cancer research.

Should we put so much of that into just one disease rather than spreading it out more?

It seems to me that concerning the program you talked about, the Grant Opportunity Program, the GO Grants, it is my information that the purpose of this program is to support high-impact ideas that require significant resources for a…

I just want to see how we judge the success of the Recovery Act funding.

It seems to me that if you put most of the money in the RO1 grants and you do it for 2 years rather than 4 years, what happens after 2 years?

Maybe this grant leads to a new compound that a pharmaceutical company wants to develop into a new drug and that means more money in our economy.

Would you tell us what, if anything, is being done to expand the research portfolio for this lethal form of cancer?

I just think you're doing an outstanding job at NIH, all of you.

We provided $1.1 billion for comparative effectiveness in the Recovery Act.

I'll have to correct some of the ways I've been saying things then because I've been led to believe maybe some of the immunities we have comes because we've gotten the seasonal flu shots over the last few years, but that's not it.

I think we have to be more positive in our approach on this, and on looking at these potential conflicts of interest.

I want to know if that makes sense.

We can change our minds. It's occurred to me that, yes, we initially put that out there to be 2 years, but maybe we might want to think about making an exception for NIH.