Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2006

DEPARTMENTS OF LABOR, HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES, AND EDUCATION, AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT FOR FISCAL YEAR 2006

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, what I am doing with this motion is making a statement of policy that I think most American families would support. It is this:

In this troubled time, when we are having difficulties with our budget, the one area we absolutely must protect is medical research at the National Institutes of Health.

Over the last 10 years or more, we have made a concerted effort in America to invest more money in medical research, to ultimately double the amount of money going into medical research. It is a heroic effort, and it is the right thing to do under Presidents of both political parties because we understand how vulnerable each and every one of us and every member of our family could be with one diagnosis from a doctor.

I salute the chairman of the committee, Senator Specter, and Ranking Member Harkin of Iowa. I can't find any stronger advocates for medical research than these two Senators.

The bill that we are considering that came to us from conference is a bill which turns its back on all the progress we have made by putting money into medical research. Unfortunately, this bill would result in our funding the National Institutes of Health at a level inconsistent with the pattern of growth that we have seen over the last several years.

Let me be as specific as I can. I have heard from people across Illinois about how important medical research is to them and their families. My family knows that, and the families of everyone watching know it, too.

Eight-year-old Claire Livingston, who is living with type II diabetes, came by my office. More and more children are affected by diabetes. Claire checks her blood glucose level several times a day and adjusts her medication, her diet, her activity levels. She is bright and happy. Her mother wakes her up in the middle of the night to make sure she is going to be alive in the morning.

That is the reality. They only ask one thing of me. Please make sure that we continue the research into diabetes at the National Institutes of Health.

Autism: Are you aware of the fact that 1 out of every 165 children in America now suffers from autism? I don't know why. We are not certain why.

Do we want to stop asking the important questions? You know the struggle these children go through and their families go through to cope with their terrible disease. Why in the world would we step away from medical research funding in this area?

The autism research NIH supports is looking at biological factors that cause autism but also looking at interventions--what works and what doesn't work. We owe it to the NIH to allow them to continue their work. The list goes on and on.

Members of the Senate and the House are visited on a regular basis by individuals and families who are suffering from diseases and maladies. They ask us to do something, please--whether it is cancer or heart research or diabetes or asthma. Please make sure the funding levels continue.

NIH-supported research into muscular dystrophy is promising. Children are living longer. We cannot back off. We cannot lose sight of the enormous role that NIH research plays in the discovery of treatments and cures for the life-threatening illnesses that afflict millions of Americans each year--such as heart disease, cancer, and stroke.

NIH research grants have moved us to the forefront of the world's scientific community. We take a backseat to no one when it comes to medical research. If we pass budgets such as the ones sent to us by the NIH, we will be weakening our commitment.

The bill the House rejected just yesterday includes only a $150 million increase in National Institutes of Health funding, the lowest increase in 36 years. You say to yourself, well, $150 million more in these times cannot hurt. Considering the rate of biomedical inflation, what it costs to do research, this increase represents a cut in funding. Assuming no change in committed resources, it means there will be 505 fewer research projects next year at the National Institutes of Health than there were this year.

Could one of those important projects, projects that have been carefully evaluated, be that critical project for you, your family, your children, or someone you love? If it is, is this not a false economy, to cut this budget at this moment in our history? Can we really afford to shortchange our Nation's premier research institution when illnesses such as heart disease and stroke continue to be leading causes of death? When so many people are afflicted with so many forms of cancer? These diseases will cost our country $394 billion in medical expenses and lost productivity in this your alone.

In simple dollar terms, the amount of money we are alleging we will save by cutting medical research just means more people afflicted with disease, more medical expenses for them and for our Nation.

Increased investment in NIH research can yield extraordinary breakthroughs. We can maintain our leadership role in the world in medical research. We can further the missions we have started at the National Institutes of Health. We need to significantly increase medical research funding, not back off. We need to support our Nation's researchers. They need to know we stand behind them. These men and women working in the laboratories, as I stand and speak in the Senate, need to know this budget process is not going to move from left to right and up and down. They need to know there is continuity and commitment from our Government so they can dedicate their lives to this important work.

I urge my colleagues to join me in charging the conferees to retain the Senate language, which increases the budget of the National Institutes of Health by $1 billion. A billion could not be better spent in this economy. Any who have had the misfortune of learning of a serious illness in the family say a little prayer to God, then try to find the best doctor and hospital we can find. We walk into that doctor's office, frightened with what we are about to hear, hoping that doctor will say there is something we can do. If the doctor says they are not quite there yet, this illness that we are concerned about is one that they do not have a
grip on yet, we pray to God that someone somewhere in a laboratory connected with medical research is trying to find that cure to save that person we love so much.

Unlike most people who can just pray for that outcome, we can do something about it in the Senate. We can say that a national priority will be medical research come hell or high water. We can say that we are not going to back out of a 36-year commitment to increase the funding for the National Institutes of Health.

Some will argue there are higher priorities. There are some who believe tax cuts for wealthy Americans are much more important than dealing with medical research. Those ranks do not include this Senator. I believe medical research should be the highest priority. It has no partisan side to it. Republican and Democrats, people who do not vote, we all get sick. We all pray there will be a commitment by this Senate and by this Nation for premier medical research to find cures for those illnesses.

I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

http://thomas.loc.gov/