On the recordJuly 25, 2011
There is an unfortunate time-honored tradition in the House of people coming to the floor and objecting to reductions in spending with heartfelt arguments as to why the spending is necessary and never offering any suggestions about where the money might be made up instead. That, frankly, is one of the reasons we have the huge deficits and debts that we do. So I want to break with that tradition and talk to you about a spending reduction I have a great concern about and then talk about how we might make it up instead. There is not a person in this House who has not been touched in some way by cancer in their family, in someone they love, some friend. I don't think there is anybody here who hasn't had the heartbreak of dealing with malignancy in their family. Let me say from the outset, Mr. Chairman, I don't think there is a Member of this House that doesn't want to do everything he or she could to deal with solving that problem. There is not a Member in this place, Republican or Democrat, who is indifferent to the problem of fighting cancer. Now, cancer comes from a lot of things. It's genetic. It's hereditary. It comes from foods. But a lot of it comes from the environment. It comes from water. If the water we drink or we cook with or we bathe in is not clean, it can sometimes be the trigger that triggers the dreaded disease of cancer for someone we care about.…
