Advanced Research Projects Agency-Health Act

Floor Speech

Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak in support of the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Health Act, or ARPA-H Act. I know this has been an important priority for researchers, industry, and, most importantly, patients who are waiting for life-changing medical technology to improve or even save their lives.

This legislation will authorize the establishment of ARPA-H within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The agency will specifically be charged with helping to foster high-risk, high-reward treatments and cures for diseases with clinically unmet needs.

Some of my colleagues may be concerned about a new agency, and that is where a number of Republicans on the Committee on Energy and Commerce were early in October when this legislation was introduced.

ARPA-H was funded at $1 billion in the previous appropriations bill in 2021. To ensure that funding was used for the best possible result, the Committee on Energy and Commerce for the past several months has worked hard to ensure that ARPA-H has a clear mission. As a result, it passed out of committee with a strong 55-to-3 vote.

We most notably ensure this newly created agency remains separate from the NIH. We limit administration costs associated with setting up ARPA-H to maximize research investments, which would require a strategic plan and transparent reporting on projects; define the number of offices; and require that the majority of offices within the organization be exclusively devoted to biomedical research and development.

In order to ensure this agency is fostering the development of innovative, transformative health technologies that are not being met by Federal programs or private industry, the technologies the agency should pursue are very explicitly defined in the legislation before us today.

The legislation puts guardrails in place to ensure that priority access is granted to U.S. researchers over researchers abroad. There are additional requirements for international researchers to work in collaboration with a U.S. counterpart if they receive ARPA-H funding.

Importantly, the bill makes clear that funding is prohibited from going to nondomestic recipients of a malign foreign country, most notably Chinese research labs or Russian research labs. This is a significant step to ensure the United States' intellectual property isn't being stolen by our adversaries and to ensure we remain the world leader in biomedical research and innovation.

As the Republican leader on the Health Subcommittee, I am leading efforts to strengthen oversight of NIH-funded research. It is unacceptable that some Federal grants have been supporting foreign researchers with ties to governments of adversarial nations like China. We must prevent this from happening moving forward.

Mr. Speaker, I emphasize the need to pass this bill. The funding has already been appropriated in a previous year. If we don't pass this bill and don't authorize this agency to move forward, then this will erode our oversight role in Congress. Funding decisions made by ARPA-H must require diligence to ensure that resources are being spent as appropriately and as effectively as possible.

The Biden administration ARPA-H organizational chart, without this bill, has 14 offices, less than half of which are actually dedicated to research. This gives us insight into how the Biden administration would manage this new agency without congressional guidance. It is just appropriate that the legislative branch sets up the way this money is being spent.

That is what the bill before us today does. It puts ARPA-H on the right track, gives Congress the opportunity to set high standards, and promotes greater biomedical research and innovation for patients.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the majority for working together. I thank our staff for the excellent work they have done. I encourage the passage of this because if we don't pass it, the money is still going to be spent but without congressional guardrails.

Mr. Speaker, I support this bill, and I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. GUTHRIE. Mr. Speaker, as the chair of this committee, Mr. Upton made his signature issue the 21st Century Cures, and not just passing that which has changed people's lives already but being able to work with Ms. DeGette and all the others to say that this is something we all need to work on together in a bipartisan way and make a big difference.

Now as chair emeritus, this is, I think, his signature piece. He may have other pieces of legislation, too, but this is the one that I have worked on with him in the very beginning in the Oval Office with the President. We worked together to say: Can we do something big that is really going to change the lives of people in this country?

He has done it. He has done it his entire career. He is a mentor of mine, and, unfortunately, at the end of this year he is going to do something different than being here in Congress. He will be missed for his voice and being a champion of this issue.

Mr. Speaker, I am going to yield to him so that he can speak on this bill for himself. The gentleman certainly has left a legacy here with the previous legislation and this piece of legislation. So let's work together to move it forward.

Mr. Speaker, it is important we are here today.

I thank the chair of the other subcommittee whom I have the privilege to work alongside as the Republican leader. She has been a champion of ARPA-H as it first came out and at the first meeting at the White House. We have discussed quite a bit about where it should be and what the guardrails should be.

I know the funding got out in front of it. We all really wanted Congress to have a say in how this agency operated and not the executive branch the way, unfortunately, getting in front of authorization does.

I appreciate the hard work. I appreciate the work of the colleagues who have spoken and everybody else who is working on this together on our staff.

Mr. Speaker, I think it is important that we pass this bill. I urge my colleagues to vote for the bill tonight, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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Mr. GUTHRIE. Mr. Speaker, I claim the time in opposition, even though I am not opposed to the bill.

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Mr. GUTHRIE. Mr. Speaker, the Chair of the subcommittee kind of went through what the amendment says. Another thing that we need to make sure is reinforced is that the amendment would ensure that agency and precious U.S. taxpayer dollars can never go to nondomestic recipients organized under the laws of a covered foreign entity as defined by the National Security Act of 1947. This includes China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. So I want to make sure we understand that.

I said this on the debate on the bill that the Chair and I were talking back and forth. And I understood the mission of what we wanted to accomplish with ARPA-H, but I was concerned about the application of it and how it would actually be put into place. We had a lot of discussions based on that.

This amendment really does define as best as we can define in legislation, without vague terms, what we want ARPA-H to do. This amendment ensures that 85 percent of the money goes to research and not to administration and growing an agency. We think that this really does narrow and, as we said earlier, put guardrails. This amendment is what accomplishes that with the bill. I am for this amendment, and I encourage its adoption.

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