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Floor Speech

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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, the National Institutes of Health here in the Washington, DC, area is the leading health research Agency in the world--in the world. And we are very proud of that fact.

One of the leaders of the NIH, through Presidents of both political parties, was Dr. Francis Collins, who still is part of the Biden administration. But as head of NIH, he really brought the research capacity of that Agency to a historic high.

I visited him about 6 years ago and said: What can I do as a Member of the Senate to help you when it comes to medical research?

He said: Well, the researchers that we count on to come through with the breakthroughs in medical research are never sure what Congress is going to do. Are you going to fund us this year as much money as last year or are you going to cut our budgets? Some of the researchers give up even on promising projects because they are uncertain about the future. He said: The best thing you can do, Senator, is to get 5 percent real growth in the spending at the National Institutes of Health year in and year out.

I said: Dr. Collins, I will take you up on that.

I came back here to the Senate and discovered that the person I needed to win to my point of view on this was Republican Senator Roy Blunt from Missouri. He chaired the Appropriations subcommittee, which funded that Agency. So I went to Roy, and I said: Here is what Dr. Collins said. We all respect him. For a man who discovered the human genome, we should respect him. He thinks 5 percent real growth can make a difference.

Roy Blunt, Republican, said: I need to have Lamar Alexander and another Republican Senator on my side, and you need to make sure Patty Murray is on your side. I said: I am sure she is, but I will double check.

So we put together a team of four of us--two Democrats, two Republicans--and we did it--5 percent real growth in the budget of NIH--about 6 years ago.

The response was positive across the Nation. Researchers said: If this is going to be the future, we are going to stick with our research to see what we can find to help people alleviate suffering.

So our team put together an effort that raised the annual budget of the National Institutes of Health from $30 billion to $40 billion. It was a bipartisan effort and a good effort. Luckily, some of the research that they had undertaken was of practical value to families across America during the coronavirus epidemic. So we felt pretty good about it.

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