Political Quotes

“I have three amendments that I am asking our colleagues to support. They are bipartisan amendments. The first is a redirection of $3 million to the Centers for Disease Control for Lyme disease. I would point out to my colleagues that I have been working on Lyme disease issues since 1992, and we tried very hard for years to get a federal working group up and running. And in 2016, we did it. The Health and Human Services Tick-Borne Disease Working Group found that there are about 300,000 new cases of Lyme every year. The higher estimate or guesstimate is 476,000 cases each year. It is exploding all over this country, particularly in the northeast where the chair, obviously, comes from, as do I. It is highly endemic in New Jersey. This additional money brings the total to $24 million for CDC to work on issues related to Lyme. Amendment 51, the second amendment, has do with LymeX. It provides $5 million, through give and take, and underscores that we really believe the LymeX Innovation Accelerator will help find new diagnostics, research, and treatments. What the working group found and then what an NIH document produced by Secretary Azar, and others, found, was that we really don't have a diagnostic that works. We don't have a Lyme testing capability that is reliable and affordable. And, finally, years ago I founded, along with my good friend and colleague, Mike Doyle, the Autism Caucus. We have been leading it for over 20 years.…”