OFFICIALS LEGISLATION INTEREST GROUPS PUBLIC STATEMENTS COMMITTEES VETOES

Providing for Consideration of H.R. 6, 21st Century Cures Act

Floor Speech

Date: July 9, 2015
Location: Washington, DC
Issues: Health and Health Care

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to this rule and the underlying bill.

The bill provides for an increase of $1.75 billion per year in the budget for the National Institutes of Health. I applaud all efforts to increase funding for the NIH.

I am a survivor of ovarian cancer, and I am alive today because of the grace of God and biomedical research. So I appreciate biomedical research.

Unfortunately, this increase is not nearly enough to restore the NIH's lost purchasing power. Since fiscal year 2010, the National Institutes of Health has seen its budget erode by about $3.6 billion in real terms, an 11 percent cut. If we are serious about funding life-saving medical research, we must raise our level of ambition.

This bill also sets aside $500 million of the increase to be spent in certain specified areas of research. I think that this is a wrong approach.

The people best placed to decide which scientific avenues are worth pursuing are scientists, not politicians. We should not substitute our judgment for theirs.

I am also concerned that the bill will lower standards for medical device approval at the Food and Drug Administration and create a new pathway for antibiotic approval that, in my view, involves less rigorous testing requirements. Again, I think that this is a wrong approach.

It is our duty to protect the public from potentially unsafe devices and drugs. We do not do that by reducing standards.

Finally, the majority is yet again using this bill as a vehicle for anti-choice Hyde amendment language. Since January, the majority and its counterpart in the other Chamber have sought to restrict access to abortion no fewer than 37 times.

The bottom line on this issue is that we need to trust women and that we need to trust the choices they make. We have to trust women. Politicians have no business meddling in those decisions.

For these reasons, I believe that we should reject this bill, and I urge a ``no'' vote.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT


Source
arrow_upward