Joe Barton: “I want to thank the Member from Texas for that generous introduction. Mr. Speaker, 4 years ago, I went to then-Majority…”

“I want to thank the Member from Texas for that generous introduction. Mr. Speaker, 4 years ago, I went to then-Majority Leader Eric Cantor and committee chairman Fred Upton and asked permission to create a task force, a bipartisan task force--equal numbers of Republicans and Democrats from the Energy and Commerce Committee and the Appropriations Committee--to work with outside groups and experts to see if there were not some ideas that we could put forward in legislation to improve the ability to find and implement cures for all the various diseases that afflict our Nation. Mr. Upton and Mr. Cantor approved that task force. We had a task force of 24 members. We had an outside group that included several Nobel prize winners, leaders from Johns Hopkins and MD Anderson, former directors of NIH and FDA. That morphed in the beginning of this Congress to a task force that Diana DeGette and Chairman Upton led themselves. That has led to a bipartisan bill that, as has been pointed out, came out of committee 51-0. That is an amazingly extraordinarily positive accomplishment to have total unanimity in support of this type of a bill. We haven't reauthorized NIH since 2006, and that lapsed in 2009. This bill does that. We have taken every innovative idea in the medical community that makes any sense at all and put it into this bill. We are increasing the authorization for spending for NIH. We have the innovation fund, which is a mandatory program for 5 years.…”