[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 53 (Wednesday, April 2, 2014)]
[House]
[Page H2813]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
FUNDING FOR THE NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH
(Mrs. DAVIS of California asked and was given permission to address
the House for 1 minute.)
Mrs. DAVIS of California. Mr. Speaker, the other week, I met with
leaders of the San Diego medical research community, who had a unified
message: we need to end the cuts in research that have slowed medical
innovation for the last decade.
I am proud to be leading the bipartisan effort, along with nearly 200
of my colleagues, to push for over $32 billion in Federal funding for
the NIH.
This is a very personal issue. Almost all of us know someone who is
struggling with a disease for which the National Institutes of Health
funding is used to find a cure. That person could be a mother, a
father, a family friend or, even more heart-wrenching, a child. The
disease could be cancer, Alzheimer's, diabetes, MS, or any of the other
diseases that people face every day.
It is more than a matter of scientific research; it is a matter of
economics. For a generation, California has been a world leader in life
sciences innovation, and our State is home to the most jobs, to the
most companies, to the world's greatest concentration of top-tier
research institutions. It is time to reverse the budget cuts that
threaten this ecosystem and to increase the NIH budget to $32 billion.
____________________