Roy Blunt: “reserving the right to object, one way to be sure of not getting the work done we are doing today is to add another…”

“reserving the right to object, one way to be sure of not getting the work done we are doing today is to add another topic. I think the work we are doing today is important. My friend from Vermont mentioned some statistics that were right a couple of years ago about the decline in health care research money. We are not where we should be, but we are not where we were 2 years ago, either. When my side took control of the majority, I got a chance to chair the appropriating committee for Health and Human Services, and for the first time in 12 years, we had an almost 7-percent increase. The Senator is absolutely right--at that moment, we were 22 percent behind in research buying dollars from where we were 12 years earlier. But if everything is a priority, nothing is a priority. So we did what the government should do and what people want the government to do: We went through the process of prioritizing. We eliminated 18 programs last year--zeroed them out for either being duplicative or not doing what they were designed to do--so we could prioritize exactly the important health care research this bill talks about and my friend from Vermont mentioned, a 7-percent increase last year and another 6.5-percent increase this year. Another $2 billion came out of our committee, came out of the full appropriating committee, and has been on the desk ready for the minority to let us take up for months now. That would be an almost 14-percent increase in 2 years.…”