Chaka Fattah: “Let me first, since this is my first appearance on the floor since the tragic news of the Vice President's son's death…”

“Let me first, since this is my first appearance on the floor since the tragic news of the Vice President's son's death, offer my condolences. I am sure all of my colleagues and the people of Philadelphia consider the Biden family one of our own since they are nearby neighbors. I also want to offer my sincere condolences and concern for the people of Texas, given the tragedy of the deaths and the severe weather incidents there that have occasioned the flooding. We rise today in moving an appropriations bill, the Commerce, Justice, Science bill. The chairman and the ranking member from New York have assisted the subcommittee in its work. I want to thank the subcommittee chairman for all of the cooperation that has been extended. He has pointed to a number of the circumstances in which he has helped make sure that priorities that we were interested in were accommodated in the bill, and I want to talk a little bit about that. One is in the area of brain science, neuroscience. The BRAIN Initiative is critically important. We have some 50 million Americans suffering from brain-related diseases or disorders. Fifty million in a country of a little over 300 million is a very significant number. The diseases themselves, everything from Alzheimer's to epilepsy, autism, brain cancer--in the case of the Vice President's son--a whole host of challenges that cost our country in not just financial ways, but affect so many families.…”