OFFICIALS LEGISLATION INTEREST GROUPS PUBLIC STATEMENTS COMMITTEES VETOES

Legislative Branch Appropriations Act, 2017

Floor Speech

Date: June 10, 2016
Location: Washington, DC
Issues: Technology and Communication Government Budget and Spending

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Mr. FOSTER. Madam Chair, thank you to the gentleman from California (Mr. Takano) and to my colleagues, the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. Esty) and the gentleman from New Mexico (Mr. Ben Ray Lujan) for helping to bring this amendment to the floor.

This amendment would provide $2.5 million to resurrect the Office of Technology Assessment to revive this crucial service of providing Congress with unbiased, nonpartisan reports on a wide range of issues in science and technology.

This office is no less necessary today than when it first started in 1972. As technology continues to advance at an increasingly rapid pace and our partisan divide seems to grow deeper, Congress needs this now more than ever.

I ask my colleagues to consider just one single one of the recommendations from the Office of Technology Assessment, that the United States rapidly adopt a standardized electronic medical record format. Had this been done, we would have been able to save hundreds of millions of dollars in medical costs over the last decades and hundreds of thousands of lives of Americans through prevention of preventable medical accidents.

I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting this amendment to restore this vital source of credible and nonpartisan scientific expertise in Congress.

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