Dick Durbin: “on a separate topic, as I reflect on my time in public service, I have been thinking about the issues that have meant…”

“on a separate topic, as I reflect on my time in public service, I have been thinking about the issues that have meant the most during my career. There are a few that stand out, including my steadfast belief that the promise of medical research funding is one of the most important. That conviction led me to join forces more than 10 years ago with a bipartisan group of Senators: myself; Senator Patty Murray, a Democrat from Washington; Senator Roy Blunt, then-Republican Senator from Missouri; and Senator Lamar Alexander, a Republican Senator from Tennessee. Our team of four, Democrats and Republicans, came together and decided to speak up and be committed to increasing Federal funding for the National Institutes of Health. The National Institutes of Health is the premier medical research laboratory in the world. I did my best to make sure with my friends that we fought for a 5- percent increase in growth in medical research each and every year. We did it too. A 60-percent increase to NIH's budget over the last decade--60 percent, money that is used to research and develop new ways to fight childhood cancer, ALS, Alzheimer's, you name it. If you own a television and you ever turn it on, you can't avoid an ad for a new prescription drug. They are on all the time, with great promise, and many of them are breakthrough drugs.…”