Don't Cut NIH Funding: House of Representatives

Floor Speech

Mr. COHEN. Mr. Speaker, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital is located in Memphis, Tennessee. It is, according to U.S. News and World Report, the world's greatest children's and catastrophic illness research hospital.

The Republican budget that passed this House talks about a lot of issues, but it cuts $2.5 billion from the President's requests for the National Institute of Health, $2.5 billion less than the President recommends, and a $1.6 billion cut from last year. For the children and the adults and everyone who has cancer and needs a cure, which they are finding with the help of the NIH and St. Jude and other research hospitals, that's a death sentence. People will die.

If there is a place the Republicans should not cut, Mr. Speaker, it's at NIH grants to find cures for cancer, for Alzheimer's, for Parkinson's, for diabetes, for heart disease. I ask you for the living Americans to not cut grants to the National Institute of Health and let us have lives that go further than they otherwise would because of these crippling, catastrophic illnesses.

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