Rob Andrews: “Reclaiming my time, the chairman has said we won't have across-the-board cuts. That, of course, means that we will have…”

“Reclaiming my time, the chairman has said we won't have across-the-board cuts. That, of course, means that we will have to find larger cuts than 22 percent in other areas of the Justice Department budget. The court system? Enforcement of the immigration laws? The other things that the Justice Department does? The resolution says nothing about what those would be, so I think we can be critical on another area. For the budget year that we are in, we are spending about $5.8 billion a year on cancer research at the National Institutes of Health. If we do what the resolution says, we will cut by 22 percent and spend $4.6 billion on cancer research. The average cancer research grant is about $350,000. That means that we would have 3,628 fewer cancer research grants. If we are not going to have an across-the-board cut, I would again say: Where else in the National Institutes of Health will we cut? Research for Alzheimer's? Research for diabetes? Research for other areas? The resolution says nothing. And here is what a prominent American has to say about resolutions like this: "You can't fix the deficit or the national debt by killing NPR or the National Endowment for the Humanities or the Arts. Nice political chatter, but that doesn't do it. And I'm very put off when people just say let's go back and freeze to the level 2 years ago. Don't tell me you're going to freeze to a level. That usually is a very inefficient way of doing it.…”