Political Quotes

“I want to acknowledge the great work of the gentleman from Texas on patent reform. We worked together and he led the effort that has reformed our patent system, I think, in a remarkable way. The majority leader and I spent some time on one of the last vote days here to go over to NIH and hear from Dr. Collins about great research, particularly interested in pediatric cancers and the like. So these are two gentlemen, the authors of this amendment, who have been very positive and focused in a number of areas that I share with them. However, this amendment is misguided, and I want to speak in opposition to it. The notion that we would want to eliminate certain investigations by the National Science Foundation into economic science or behavioral science, when we talk about disasters, the reason why we have saved so many lives, it is not just that we have improved weather forecasting, even though that would be eliminated in terms of the moneys here for investigative purposes by the National Science Foundation, but also understanding the behaviors of people facing disasters is very important. That would be cut. This area of posttraumatic stress is a critical area. We know now that many of our returning soldiers face posttraumatic stress, but we also know that children living in very difficult circumstances in our country are more traumatized than if they were living in a war zone, an active war zone in another country.…”