On the recordOctober 28, 2015
it is possible this week that we will pass a budget agreement for the fiscal year we are currently in. That year started October 1 and runs, of course, until the end of December in the next calendar year. If we do reach that agreement--and I hope we do--it is going to give us some opportunities. One opportunity it will give us is to spare ourselves the possibility of this Congress failing to enact a new budget ceiling to basically guarantee the full faith and credit of the United States of America. We won't face that showdown. Also, the possibility of a government shutdown will be relieved by the passage of this budget agreement. Those are good, positive things for this institution and for the economy of America, but there are specifics that also need to be noted because this budget agreement gives us a chance to invest in areas of our budget that sadly would have been overlooked if we hadn't reached this agreement. This morning we had an extraordinary presentation by the National Institutes of Health. Twenty Senators came to hear the presentation about research at the National Institutes of Health and what it means to us. Dr. Francis Collins is the Director and is an extraordinary man. He is a medical doctor who was given the task of mapping the human genome and did it. He did it in an extraordinary way, creating new information and new opportunities. A doctor from the Mayo Clinic explained what that meant.…
