David Obey: “years ago Senator Proxmire from my State used to have the Golden Fleece Awards. He was a good friend of mine. One year…”

“years ago Senator Proxmire from my State used to have the Golden Fleece Awards. He was a good friend of mine. One year he made a whole lot of fun of a study on Polish pigs. They had a field day with it. Funny name, strange-sounding grant. Well, guess what? That study led to the development of a new blood pressure medicine which millions of people use today. The know-nothings in the Congress at that time would have eliminated that study. I do not think that would have been a good outcome. I have served on the subcommittee that deals with NIH for a long time, and the one thing I came to understand very quickly is that the day that we politicize NIH research, the day we decide which grants are going to be approved on the basis of a 10-minute horseback debate in the House of Representatives with 434 of the 435 Members in this place who do not even know what the grant is, that is the day we will ruin science research in this country. We have no business making political judgments about those kinds of issues.”