Steve Cohen: “Many people have been concerned about the sequester and the effects it has had on airplane flights. And I am, too.…”

“Many people have been concerned about the sequester and the effects it has had on airplane flights. And I am, too. People are delayed a half hour, an hour, or whatever, and that's bad. But the biggest thing people ought to be upset about the sequester is the fact that it takes $1.6 billion out of the National Institutes of Health. Mr. Speaker, each person in this room at one time will face a rendezvous with destiny. Whether that rendezvous is cancer, heart disease, stroke, Alzheimer's, AIDS, diabetes, or Parkinson's, the National Institutes of Health is working for cures and treatments. By taking $1.6 billion from what is our personal Department of Defense, we are going to put certain people at risk for death and for trauma. That is wrong. There is no more important funding that we do than the National Institutes of Health. That's our opportunity to save people's lives. I will introduce a bill to take that funding out of the sequester. I ask my colleagues in a bipartisan manner to put the people first. The real enemy is disease. Fund the National Institutes of Health fully. ____________________”