Reply #1: Here's some stuff for 2003

[goobergunch]

Mr. OBEY (regarding Regula's bill). <snip>

Now move to the health care front. For 5 years we have almost doubled funding at NIH, the institute which provides for most of the medical research in this country, but this bill puts the brake on that 5-year progress. The result? Grants for new programs and competitive renewal of existing or of expiring grants will go up by only two-tenths of 1 percent for a grand total of 21 grants, the smallest increase in 15 years.

I invite Members of this House, tell the 1.3 million people who are going to get cancer this year, tell the 1 million people who are going to find out they have diabetes, tell the 60,000 people who are going to get Parkinson's, tell them that it is more important to give an $88,000 tax cut to somebody who makes $1 million a year than it is to continue our efforts to attack those diseases at full throttle.

We hear this nonsense about how NIH needs some breathing time in order to absorb the money that we have already given them. Baloney. Less than 35 percent of all of the grants that are approved as being quality science are ever funded. Tell me there is not a need.

Or if you want to move on, the nursing, the new nursing act that passed last year, every politician in this House wrote to every nurse in their district and said, ``we love you, we are all for this program.'' Where is the money to make it reality? No new money in this bill for that program.

Then if you take a look at community service block grant, money that we provide that is used to help families that are poor and near poor, cut by 150 million bucks.

(page H6499)

He voted FOR the Repuke medicare bill H.R. 1
http://clerkweb.house.gov/cgi-bin/vote.exe?year=2003&rollnumber=332

I'll post more tomorrow...my mom is yelling at me to shut down the computer.