[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 4]
[House]
[Page 5946]
[From the U.S. 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. Many people have been concerned about the sequester and 
the effects it has had on airplane flights. And I am, too. People are 
delayed a half hour, an hour, or whatever, and that's bad. But the 
biggest thing people ought to be upset about the sequester is the fact 
that it takes $1.6 billion out of the National Institutes of Health.
  Mr. Speaker, each person in this room at one time will face a 
rendezvous with destiny. Whether that rendezvous is cancer, heart 
disease, stroke, Alzheimer's, AIDS, diabetes, or Parkinson's, the 
National Institutes of Health is working for cures and treatments. By 
taking $1.6 billion from what is our personal Department of Defense, we 
are going to put certain people at risk for death and for trauma. That 
is wrong. There is no more important funding that we do than the 
National Institutes of Health. That's our opportunity to save people's 
lives.
  I will introduce a bill to take that funding out of the sequester. I 
ask my colleagues in a bipartisan manner to put the people first. The 
real enemy is disease. Fund the National Institutes of Health fully.

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