Accelerating the End of Breast Cancer Act

Floor Speech

Mrs. CAPITO. Mr. Speaker, October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

It is estimated that almost 40,000 women in the United States will die of breast cancer this year. Those are mothers, sisters, grandmothers, wives, daughters. We will miss them, and it shouldn't be. Thousands of men will be diagnosed with breast cancer as well.

Breast cancer is the second leading cause of cancer deaths among women in the United States. Globally, breast cancer accounts for one-quarter of all cancers suffered by women. Every family probably in this Chamber today and across America has been touched in its life by somebody who has had breast cancer, and I am certainly no exception. My mother-in-law, Ruth Eskew Capito, died tragically at age 51--diagnosed with breast cancer. I never knew her as a mother-in-law, and my children never got to enjoy the pleasures of having her as their grandmother. The emptiness and the hurt never go away.

With the efforts of many dedicated to fighting breast cancer, we are making some progress--but limited progress--in stopping premature deaths caused by this terrible disease. In 1991, an average of 119 women in the United States died of breast cancer each day. Today, more than 20 years later, an average of 108 women will die of the disease each day. So between the years of 2000 and 2009, the cancer mortality rate for women has declined by 1.9 percent annually.

We must accelerate the progress we are making in finding new lifesaving treatments for breast cancer. That is why I, along with a bipartisan group of cosponsors, introduced H.R. 1830, the Accelerating the End of Breast Cancer Act. The Accelerating the End of Breast Cancer Act sets a national goal of ending deaths from the disease by 2020. This bill would establish a commission that would direct Federal and private sector resources towards the promising treatments aimed at stopping metastasis, or the spread of breast cancer, to other parts of the body.

The legislation is not designed to spend more taxpayers' dollars. In fact, the bill does not authorize any new Federal spending. Instead, it is designed to direct our existing research dollars in the most efficient way possible. The Accelerating the End of Breast Cancer Act will not duplicate the efforts of existing government agencies and programs. It will, instead, provide a vital check and balance and will help ensure our limited research dollars are funding the most promising science in the area of breast cancer research. In working in this way and in building on the decades of Federal investment and achievement in breast cancer research, we can move forward to end breast cancer and learn how to prevent the disease within the next decade.

So far, there are 172 House Members from both parties and all ideologies who have cosponsored this legislation. I invite my colleagues today, in this month of October--National Breast Cancer Awareness Month--who have not yet cosponsored, to join us in a cosponsorship. I look forward to working with Members on both sides of the aisle to spur the development of new lifesaving treatments for those with breast cancer. The hope to end breast cancer can become a reality. Let's join together to make that happen.

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