During Wednesday’s Senate Appropriations Committee hearing, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) raised concerns about funding cuts to the National Institutes of Health.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00Senator Durbin. Madam Chair, thanks for this historic hearing. There are those of us who are concerned about this issue, but you used your authority as chair of the Appropriations Committee to draw us together and to tell this story to a much larger audience. So thank you very much for that.
00:19Mrs. Emily Stinson, that daughter of yours is amazing. She gets a special congressional medal for putting up with so much political speech, so many political speeches from this side.
00:34If you've ever been a parent sitting in a doctor's office with a baby on your lap and heard those words that were earth changing diagnoses, you knew your life would never be the same.
00:48And the questions that you would ask, and I've been there, the questions you would ask are pretty obvious. Is there a medicine? Is there a surgery? Is there a procedure? If not, is there a clinical trial?
01:03We all ask the same questions faced with this terrible challenge. Praying to God that one of the answers is yes. And that's what this hearing is all about. To make sure that one of those answers is yes.
01:21It really makes all the difference in the world. So I will tell you that 10 years ago, I went out to the NIH and met with Francis Collins, who I consider to be a modern day saint, and said to him, you'll appreciate this, Dr. Parikh.
01:37I can remember the time when a handful of legislators, Specter and Harkin and Porter doubled the NIH budget. And I said to Dr. Collins, I don't think I can do that again. What can I do?
01:49He said, give us 5% real growth a year. And the researchers will be confident that next year is going to be a good year too. And they'll stick to their research and good things will happen.
01:59So I set out to do that. And the first person I visited was Patty Murray, who was a willing volunteer in that effort. Roy Blunt, Republican Senator from Missouri, who chaired the subcommittee.
02:10And then Lamar Alexander, another Republican Senator from Tennessee. And we achieved not perfect 5% growth each year, but we went from a $30 billion budget in FY15 to NIH budget of $49.8 billion.
02:28$49 billion today. 60% increase. 60%. The suggested change from the Trump administration and NIH will wipe out all of that.
02:4210 years, one decade of work, bipartisan work, to increase medical research across the United States. That's what's at stake here. That's what we're getting down to.
02:53I look at it and I think we haven't mentioned, but I want to mention the number of drugs that have been approved by the FDA in the last 2010 to 2019. 356 new drugs.
03:07You see them on television all the time. 356 new drugs. How many came out of NIH research? 354 of the 356. We got to make sure that that's part of the record as well.
03:20Their research leads to medicine that makes a difference. And that's what we're all fighting to make sure it continues.
03:26I also want to put in the record, Madam Chair, a statement from the Defense Health Research Consortium that talks about the Department of Defense Medical Research as well.
03:36It's focused primarily on veterans and members of the military, but it has many applications beyond.
03:42The traumatic brain injury, the research also affects epilepsy. So there are many different ways that these things can work together.
03:50Without objection.
03:51Thank you. I just want to close by saying that want to make America great again? Don't run away from that child sitting there at that table.
04:00Stick with the research at NIH that gives her hope.
04:10We can work together, and I think this hearing is a good indication there's strong bipartisan support for NIH.
04:16Thank you, Madam Chair.