Political Quotes

“Madam Speaker, while certainly saluting the many Members who have worked so diligently on this measure, I cannot vote for it. In a wide and endless desert of support for research funding, even getting a few drops of rain is understandably welcomed by the thirsty. Under Republican rule, we have seen a dreadful drought in research funding. This is a bill that attempts to address that shortfall. I voted for the bill when it was on the floor of the House at a previous time. At that point, it promised the hope, after this long drought of almost $10 billion in assured, certain funding, for research so that we might find cures for some of these diseases before we get them ourselves--the concern of so many people. Now, under this new measure, we have only about a fourth of the funding previously approved in the House, and it is no longer certain money; it is maybe money for the future. So there may be bipartisan agreement, but there is not a bipartisan advancement. At the same time that research dollars are dramatically cut--the very research dollars that were the reason for having this bill in the first place--Big Pharma got some of its wish list approved. And how very appropriate that this measure and so many other moving parts have been packed into what it calls the Tsunami Warning bill.…”