Chris Smith: “I want to thank both leaders, but I want to thank Kay Granger for her extraordinary support for legislation that I…”

“I want to thank both leaders, but I want to thank Kay Granger for her extraordinary support for legislation that I authored, two bills that are included in this act. I thank Nita Lowey as well, the distinguished chairwoman. The first bill is known as the TICK Act. Twenty-one years ago, in 1998, I introduced the Lyme Disease Initiative Act of 1998. Every 2 years, every Congress, with well over 100 cosponsors, would have a bill that would look to create a national strategy in combating Lyme disease. This legislation includes that strategy, and I am deeply grateful for that. It also is now named after Senator Kay Hagan, who, sadly, died from a tick-borne disease in October. But it provides a national strategy, $150 million authorization for Lyme research, prevention, and treatment programs, and enables additional Federal agencies to step up and coordinate their efforts in the fight against Lyme. As we know from the working group, there are 300,000 new cases every year. The high-end estimate is 437,000 cases. Chronic Lyme is a very serious problem. The NIH recently came out with their new strategy, and I am very grateful to the Trump administration for doing that because there is no real detection capability that is reliable, so the diagnosis is often faulty. There is also the very real problem that there are no therapeutics that can deal with Lyme disease, especially if it is missed in the beginning from a tick bite.…”