Cloture Motion

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, today I rise with my colleague from Maine, Senator Susan Collins, to bring attention to the millions of Americans living with Alzheimer's disease and related dementias and the loving caregivers who take care of them.

One in three seniors who die each year has Alzheimer's or related dementia. The cost is incredible. In 2016, we will spend $236 billion caring for individuals with Alzheimer's. By 2050, these costs will reach $1.1 trillion.

The one thing we know is we are seeing more and more people with Alzheimer's. We are working diligently--all of our doctors and medical professionals--for a cure, but we know that, in the meantime, we will have many family members involved in taking care of them.

Senator Collins and I have introduced the Alzheimer's Caregiver Support Act, which authorizes grants to public and nonprofit organizations to expand training and support services for families and caregivers of patients with Alzheimer's disease or related dementias. We think that these sisters and brothers, sons and daughters, and husbands and wives who are doing this caregiving all want to have the best quality of life possible for their loved one who has this devastating disease--and they want to be trained. If they don't have that ability to learn what tools they can use when someone around them just starts forgetting what they said 10 minutes before, they need to learn how to take care of them, and many of them want to do that. Our bill simply gives them the tools to do that.

I thank Senator Collins for her longtime leadership.

I thank Senator Carper, who moved the schedule around a bit so we could talk about this important bill.

I know Senator Collins wishes to speak about this as well.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source