John W. Olver: “I have only time to focus on one of the reasons for voting against this bill. My distinguished chairman of the…”

“I have only time to focus on one of the reasons for voting against this bill. My distinguished chairman of the subcommittee, the honorable chairman and good friend, has a couple of times, several times, pointed out that the NIH budget, the National Institutes of Health budget, is up from $15.6 billion by 14 percent, up to $17.9 billion. What he does not point out, and that he has never mentioned, is that $7.5 billion of that, more than 40 percent, is shifted so that it may not be obligated until the 29th or 30th day of September next year. For him to speak about that would probably cause him to throw up. The number of dollars that are available because of that feature, the number of dollars for medical research in the fiscal year is, in reality, cut by about 15 percent in the year 2000. And that means that medical research on cancer research, on Alzheimer's, on AIDS, as well as genetic causes of disease and biotechnology, all of that has to be slowed down or stopped or put on the back burner.”