[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 24 (Tuesday, February 27, 2001)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E221-E222]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




          INTRODUCTION OF THE MEDICAL RESEARCH INVESTMENT ACT

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. JENNIFER DUNN

                             of washington

                    in the house of representatives

                       Tuesday, February 27, 2001

  Ms. DUNN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to introduce bipartisan 
legislation, the Paul Coverdell Medical Research Investment Act.
  Under the current tax code, deductible charitable cash gifts to 
support medical research are limited to 50% of an individual's adjusted 
gross income. This bill would simply increase the deductibility of cash 
gifts for medical research to 80% of an individual's adjusted gross 
income. For those individuals who are willing and able to give more 
than 80% of their income, the bill also extends the period an 
individual can carry the deduction forward for excess charitable gifts 
from five years to ten years.
  In what is perhaps the most important change for today's economy, the 
bill allows taxpayers to donate stock without being penalized for it. 
Americans regularly donate stock acquired through a stock option plan 
to their favorite charity. And often they make the donation within a 
year of exercising their stock options. But current law penalizes these 
donations by taxing them as ordinary income or as capital gain. These 
taxes can run as high as 40%, which acts as a disincentive to 
contribute to charities. How absurd that someone who donates $1,000 to 
a charity has to sell $1,400 of stock to pay for it. The person could 
wait a year and give the stock then, but why delay the contribution 
when that money can be put to work curing disease today. The MRI Act is 
premised on a simple truth: People should not be penalized for helping 
others.
  PriceWaterhouseCoopers, relying on IRS data and studies of charitable 
giving, conducted a study on the effects of the MRI Act.

[[Page E222]]

 It concluded that if the proposal were in effect last year there would 
have been a 4.0% to 4.5% income in individual giving in 2000. This 
amounts to $180.4 million additional dollars in charitable donations 
for medical research--dollars that would result in tangible health 
benefits to all Americans. If the additional giving grew every year 
over five years at the same rate as national income a billion dollars 
more would be put to work to cure disease. Over the course of ten 
years, the number jumps to $2.3 billion in new money for medical 
research. For many research efforts, that money could mean the 
difference between finding a cure or not finding a cure.
  The returns from increased funding of medical research--not only in 
economic savings to the country, but in terms of curing disease and 
finding new treatments--could be enormous. The amount and impact of 
disease in this country is staggering. Each day more than 1,500 
Americans die of cancer. Sixteen million people have diabetes--their 
lives are shortened by an average of fifteen years. Cardiovascular 
diseases take approximately one million American lives a year. One and 
a half million people have Parkinson's Disease. Countless families 
suffer with the pain of a loved one who has Alzheimer's. And yet these 
diseases go without a cure. We must work towards the day then they are 
cured, prevented, or eliminated--just like polio and smallpox were 
years ago.
  Increased funding of medical research by the private sector is needed 
to save and improve American lives. New discoveries in science and 
technology are creating even greater opportunities than in the past for 
large returns from money invested in medical research. The mapping of 
the human genome is but one example. Dr. Abraham Lieberman, a 
neurologist at the National Parkinson's Foundation, was quoted in 
Newsweek as saying that the medical research community today is 
``standing at the same threshold that we reached with infectious 
disease 100 years ago.''
  The MRI Act encourages the financial gifts that will enable that 
threshold to be overcome. I hope you will join me in supporting it.

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