Concurrent Resolution On The Budget, Fiscal Year 2016 -- Continued

Floor Speech

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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, we are engaged in an annual ritual on the floor of the Senate--the budget resolution.

The budget resolution comes to the floor, and Senator Enzi of Wyoming and Senator Sanders of Vermont lead the effort to debate the budget resolution. This is not a law because it is never sent to the President. It is something passed by the House and the Senate that kind of says: The President told us we couldn't spend anything more than X; we will tell you how we would spend it. It always is different from what the President suggested. So we get into a debate about how we are going to spend our Federal budget.

That is what a budget resolution is all about, and we have to make choices--just as families make choices when it comes to things they buy for their families and for their homes.

So I will talk about an amendment I am going to offer which gives us a choice.

First, today on Capitol Hill we have visitors walking the corridors wearing purple sashes. If we look closely, written on those sashes it says Alzheimer's Association. It is not unusual for us to get visits from people who are interested in medical issues--cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer's. The list goes on. They come here basically with very fundamental requests: Can you find more research dollars to help us find a cure? Can you provide support to the families who are facing this disease? I have faced that so many times as a Congressman and as a Senator.

I use this as an illustration, because Alzheimer's is a disease and an issue which is becoming more dominant in America. I am about to state a statistic which I didn't believe when I heard it, and I went back and checked and double checked, and it is true. I have spoken on the floor here about 3 minutes. In that 3-minute period of time, three Americans have been diagnosed with Alzheimer's. One American is diagnosed with Alzheimer's every 68 seconds in America. It is a disease which is starting to gallop across our Nation and affect more and more families. It is expensive, costly--costly, of course, to the victim who loses touch with the people they love and the life they want to lead; costly, too, to the caregivers--the children, the spouses, and others--who turn their lives around and start to care for the person with Alzheimer's.

Last year in America we spent $200 billion on Medicare and Medicaid for Alzheimer's victims, and, sadly, the projection is that in just a few years, we are going to see this figure surpass $1 trillion. It will literally eat up the Medicare and Medicaid programs as we know them. That is one disease, but it is one that is so serious that we have to take it seriously.

I can speak in personal terms--and I bet everyone can--about cancer, what it has meant to my family, what it means to families all across America.

Here is what it gets down to: Will we make a decision as a nation to make the right investment in biomedical research? We have the best biomedical research agency in the world--the National Institutes of Health. Nobody questions that. The Centers for Disease Control is right by its side in the work that it does. The Department of Defense, Veterans Administration, even the Department of Energy, all do work in relation to medical research and medical technology.

So the question that is posed to us--to this generation of Senators sitting on the floor--is this: Are we going to do further research in areas that can cure disease, alleviate human suffering, and, yes, reduce the cost to the government?

I have found this is the most bipartisan issue in the world. I have been all over Illinois, and we have a lot of Republicans, Democrats, and Independents. When I stop to talk about biomedical research, everybody is on board. The mother with the diabetic son, the father with a wife suffering from some form of cancer--they are all on board, they are listening. And they should.

What I will offer as an amendment here is generally just a marker. It doesn't mean that medical research will be enhanced or grow in size, but it basically puts us on record as to whether the United States Senate believes that we should invest additional money into biomedical research.

Why should we put more money into it? I went out to the National Institutes of Health. There is a doctor out there named Dr. Francis Collins. I think he is one of the best. Francis Collins, back in 1988--if I am not mistaken--was given the task of mapping the human genome. I am a liberal arts lawyer, so I am lost. The human genome has something to do with our DNA and tells the people who research it a lot about us and diseases we are likely or not likely to have. So they mapped the human genome, which took years to do, and with that information they are making giant strides now in finding cures for diseases and breakthroughs and identifying some of these issues.

We all read about Angelina Jolie and what she is going through with her fear of cancer. It is based on a family history, medical advice, and, yes, something that has been found in her DNA through the human genome project that leads her to be more sensitive and worried about her own health. She is a famous actress, and that is why we pay close attention. But it applies to families across the board.

Here is the point I am getting to. We are falling behind in biomedical research. In the last 10 years we have lost 23 percent of our spending power to fund medical research. That means that, 10 years ago, one out of every three promising research projects was funded. Today, it is one out of six. I don't need to tell the Senator from Maryland, Mr. Cardin, because NIH is in his State, and he knows what they do and he knows the researchers and Dr. Collins.

I went to Dr. Collins, and I said to him: What can we in the Congress do to help you find cures for diseases?

Senator, he said, it is very basic: Give us 5-percent real growth in our appropriation for 10 straight years--5 percent over inflation. Give me that, Senator, and I promise you--I promise you, we will pay for it over and over in saving money on medical treatment, in alleviating the suffering of disease that we face in this country.

That is what I am trying to do. The American Cures Act is legislation I put in to do that.

Well, what will it cost, Senator? It is easy to come up with some idea on the floor that is going to cost a lot of money and not pay for it. What will it cost us?

Over a 10-year period of time, a 5-percent real growth increase in NIH, CDC, and the other departments I mentioned, over a 10-year period of time as additional spending comes to $150 billion.

In that 10-year period of time, we will appropriate more than $15 trillion in Federal spending. Work the decimal points. I am talking about a tiny sliver of a small percentage that goes into medical research. And I am also saying that I am willing to stand here as a Senator and promise you that medical research will pay for itself over and over and over again.

I am of an age that I can remember the fear of polio--some folks with gray hair may remember that too--when, as a kid, kids were coming down with polio, crippled by it, many of them living in iron lungs, and parents were scared to death. We didn't know where it was coming from. My mother had a theory that it had something to do with water standing in the street:

Don't you go play in that puddle. You may get polio.

Who knew? No one knew. But we were afraid because we knew fellow classmates who were getting polio.

And then, 60 years ago, along comes Jonas Salk. Every school child in America knew that name. We didn't look forward to that shot; that is for sure. But the notion that we would be liberated from the fear of polio, that was such an amazing discovery that it was national and international news. Medical research can do that. Jonas Salk did that. We have done it over and over again.

So now, will our generation give up on biomedical research? Will we decide that balancing the budget, eliminating the deficit is more important than a small contribution toward the National Institutes of Health? I hope not. The amendment I will offer will ask the Senate to go on record to support this effort.

Senator Moran from Kansas was here earlier. He has a similar amendment. I am going to vote for Senator Moran's amendment. I hope he votes for mine.

Let's be bipartisan about this. Let's find something we can agree on. Let's make it biomedical research. Let's make it a commitment to the NIH.

I know that people we represent in every State of the Union will say: You did the right thing, Senator. Put politics aside. Give the money to those researchers to find cures for those diseases. It is not only going to save us money; it is going to save lives.

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