Roy Blunt: “I thank the Senator from Vermont for his leadership. Again, this is the first time in over a decade for the 69 people…”

“I thank the Senator from Vermont for his leadership. Again, this is the first time in over a decade for the 69 people who aren't on the Appropriations Committee to get to come to the floor and offer amendments and think about what this bill does. Let's talk about some of the things it does. We worked really hard over the last 4 years to do the kinds of things we ought to do in healthcare research. This bill, for the first time, reaches a long-held goal of the national plan to address Alzheimer's disease, of getting those annual research dollars up over $2 billion--in fact, $2.34 billion, exceeding what had been a long-term goal. The goal should not be how much money we spend. It should be finding a way to solve this problem. This is a significant increase over last year. It quadruples where we were 4 years ago. We spent 277 billion tax dollars a year on Alzheimer's and dementia-related care. A lot more private money is spent than that--three times that amount in private money--and there is lost work as caregivers step back to help people with these terrible diseases of dementia and Alzheimer's. But here is $277 billion. So this bill does about 1 percent of that in research to try to solve a problem that taxpayers are overwhelmed by.…”