[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 40 (Tuesday, March 19, 2013)]
[House]
[Page H1579]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




               FUNDING THE NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH

  (Mr. COHEN asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute.)
  Mr. COHEN. People sometimes ask why we can't find common ground. 
There's an area we should be able to find common ground on--and we 
don't--and that's funding for the National Institutes of Health, which 
is going to be cut in the sequester by close to a billion dollars. 
There was an amendment in the Senate that tried to put funding back in 
the continuing resolution for NIH, and it failed on a party-line vote, 
with 54 Democrats and Independents voting ``yes'' and 46 Republicans 
voting ``no.''
  Republicans say the reason they want to cut spending and voted the 
sequestration in is we're putting a debt on the next generation. Let me 
submit, Mr. Speaker, that the research that's done at the National 
Institutes of Health to find cures for cancer, heart disease, diabetes, 
Alzheimer's, AIDS, and post-polio cures and treatments will affect the 
next generation more than this generation.
  We talk about the Department of Defense. The Department of Defense 
should be the National Institutes of Health, because the enemy is 
disease, and we need to conquer it and keep our loved ones alive and 
keep ourselves alive and have better cures.
  We talk about infrastructure--and I support that--but the most 
important infrastructure is the infrastructure of the human body. And 
that's what the National Institutes of Health works on. We should work 
together and fund the National Institutes of Health for all of our 
constituents.

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