[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 12]
[Senate]
[Page 17686]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                  NATIONAL PLAN TO ADDRESS ALZHEIMER'S

  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I wish to thank my colleagues Senator 
Collins from Maine and Senator Klobuchar from Minnesota for bringing 
the issue of Alzheimer's before the Senate for consideration with this 
resolution.
  I ask unanimous consent to be added as a cosponsor of S. Res. 303.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I might also add yesterday I submitted a 
resolution on the same subject and was happy to have Senator Collins as 
a cosponsor, along with several other colleagues who have joined us. 
They include Senators Mikulski, Tim Johnson, Menendez, Wicker, Moran, 
and Markey.
  The goal--I will not go through all of the important statistics that 
have been related during this floor presentation by my colleagues--but 
our goal is to make sure the national plan which is being developed to 
address Alzheimer's is carried out. We want to reinforce the initial 
steps to a greater investment in finding answers, and I think everyone 
is on that same track.
  We believe that supporting the goals and implementation of the 
National Alzheimer's Project Act and the National Plan to Address 
Alzheimer's Disease is the right course to follow.
  Achieving these goals means Federal funding must be there to 
implement it. I urge my colleagues to support this bipartisan 
resolution and reinforce our national commitment to turning around the 
seeming inevitability of this terrible disease.
  I look forward to working with my colleagues to ensure investments 
are made in Alzheimer's research.
  Let me just say parenthetically, if you think we can sequester funds 
for the National Institutes of Health and honestly deal with the 
challenge of Alzheimer's, you are wrong. You cannot cut funding at the 
National Institutes of Health in the name of sequestration, cutting 
grants that could find breakthrough cures for many diseases. You cannot 
cut those funds and discourage researchers from even participating in 
future research and expect to solve the medical challenges that face 
us, including Alzheimer's.
  I am urging my colleagues to look at this not as just a matter of 
resolutions, which are important, but also funding which is critical so 
we can find the solutions to these problems in a manner that is 
reasonable and quickly done.

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