[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 139 (Tuesday, October 8, 2013)]
[House]
[Page H6348]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      AMERICAN NOBEL PRIZE WINNERS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from 
Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) for 5 minutes.
  Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I rise to congratulate the three recipients 
of the Nobel Prize in medicine for 2013. All three work at American 
universities.
  Dr. James E. Rothman chairs the cell biology department at Yale 
University. Dr. Randy W. Schekman works at the University of California 
at Berkeley. Their German counterpart, Dr. Thomas C. Sudhof, is on the 
faculty of Stanford.
  The Nobel committee has recognized the importance of their lifesaving 
work. The question is: Why don't the House Republicans?
  On the very day that three researchers at American universities won 
the Nobel Prize in medicine, the House Republicans continue their siege 
against the Government of the United States, and their siege includes 
the National Institutes of Health, where the American people through 
their Federal Government support medical research and path-breaking, 
basic research in the difficult search for cures.
  Mr. Speaker, I should note that Dr. Rothman of Yale received two 
grants under the Obama Recovery Act for his work in developing a better 
way to study cells. Of course, he would have received none if the 
Republicans in Congress had had their way. More to the point, the 
Republican shutdown has jeopardized hundreds of research projects like 
Dr. Rothman's, Dr. Schekman's and Dr. Sudhof's. The Republicans have 
essentially shut down the National Institutes of Health, which has told 
researchers that they cannot process their grant applications, which 
eventually will bring federally supported research to a halt.
  I count more than 30 research projects underway just in Ohio at Case 
Western Reserve University in Cleveland and at least a dozen more at 
the Cleveland Clinic and at the University of Toledo Medical 
University--cutting-edge research, peer-reviewed research, research 
that could save lives.
  Thanks to the Republican Congress, these are ``dark days for medical 
research.'' So says the Atlantic Magazine.

       Between the sequester and the shutdown, repeated hits to 
     research funding may have serious consequences for scientific 
     advancement.

  That's not something you see in the flash of but one day. But it 
erodes America's real strength over time.

                              {time}  1030

  Almost three out of four employees at the National Institutes of 
Health are sitting at home, thanks to the Republican Congress. They're 
not allowed to do their work of finding cures and stamping out disease. 
The Republican Congress locked them out. Two hundred patients at the 
National Institutes of Health Clinical Center were turned away due to 
the Republican Congress' throwing its little temper tantrum over losing 
the Presidential election again. Many of those 200 people are cancer 
patients, and 30 of them are children, paying a heavy, heavy price for 
Republican intransigence. The Republicans told them, Go away.
  Mr. Speaker, even if the Republicans lack any empathy whatsoever, at 
least you would think they would care about jobs in America. Research 
and development, including research and development in biotechnology, 
provides a competitive advantage for the United States. It's a very 
promising sector for economic development and job growth. Just come to 
Cleveland to see the new Health Innovation Center, or look at the 
neuropsychiatric research being conducted at Case and the University of 
Toledo Medical Center. Look at what it draws around it. Yet The 
Atlantic magazine says the sequester is killing 20,500 jobs this year 
in the life sciences field, and the government shutdown threatens to 
ground medical research into cancer, Alzheimer's, diabetes, and 
disabling neuropsychiatric disorders.
  The Nobel committee gets it. The American people get it. A recent 
poll showed that 83 percent of the public believes investing in medical 
research is important for our economy.
  So why don't the Republicans get it? As NIH Director Collins told The 
Atlantic last week:

       We will not know what grant that was going to lead to the 
     next breakthrough in cancer research didn't quite make the 
     cut. We will not know what brilliant scientists, who were 
     going to win a Nobel Prize, basically gave up because of the 
     failure to get support from the current system and decided to 
     do something else or move to another country, which some of 
     them are doing already. We won't know. That is the sad tale 
     that is wrapped up in all of this.

  The good news is that three scientists working on the frontier of 
scientific research--three scientists at American universities--did not 
give up, and they have captured the Nobel Prize in Medicine for 2013.
  The bad news is that House Republicans apparently have given up. They 
apparently don't care whether the U.S. keeps distinguishing itself by 
winning such prestigious awards. They apparently don't care whether we 
support the research that will help humankind and eliminate diseases 
and save lives. They don't care if the United States remains the global 
leader in medical and scientific research and enjoys the millions of 
jobs that it will create in the future--what a shame--and how easy it 
would be to bring up a clean continuing resolution and put the 
government of the people of this country back to work.

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