Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I thank the Chair for the recognition, and I wish to recognize the good work my colleague, the Senator from New Jersey, has done on this issue. I have been in the Senate a little over 6 years and I was cajoled into allowing this to pass the last time it passed. I have blocked every other disease-specific piece of legislation, and there is a reason for that. Both the last Director of the NIH and the current one caution against us being specific in what we demand them to do. There is a reason for that. Our science is changing enormously--enormously. We are now at the molecular level, at the genetic level, and at the immune level of thousands of diseases. What we research in diabetes now has prevalence for neurosciences. What we research in neurosciences now has prevalence for tons of other diseases. Dr. Zerhouni has said: Please don't do this. I am known in this body to be a stickler on spending, but if there were two areas I would increase spending in our budget it would be to the NIH and to the National Science Foundation--both of them--and I recently reported out a report that was somewhat critical of some of the spending on the National Science Foundation. We can do everything better. But the important aspect is no one who is opposing the reauthorization of this bill right now is opposed to autism research or the ideas behind it.…”