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INSIDE (The Beltway)
SCOOP–Jon Retzlaff, Legislative Director
We have
spent the past few weeks preparing for the
Senate to debate the L/HHS Appropriations Bill
and have begun to strategize how to convince at
least two-thirds of the Senate and House to
support the soon to be released final
conferenced/coordinated bill (where all
differences are resolved between the most
recently passed Senate L/HHS bill and the House
L/HHS bill that passed on July 19, 2007). As
you may remember, it takes two-thirds of both
the House and Senate to overturn a Presidential
veto. And if the entire community’s efforts are
able to convince at least two-thirds of the
House and Senate to vote in favor of the
conferenced/negotiated L/HHS bill, the President
may need to reconsider his current plan to veto
the legislation or risk being viewed by many as
a lame duck President for the remainder of his
term. Overriding a Presidential veto on an
appropriations bill would be seen as very
damaging to President Bush’s influence.
Unfortunately, last week’s news that House
Democrats fell short of the two-thirds majority
needed to override President Bush’s veto of a
bill expanding health-care coverage for
children, which would be funded largely by
tobacco taxes, illustrates just how difficult it
is going to be to secure the 67 votes in the
Senate and 290 votes in the House necessary to
secure funding for NIH in FY2008. Despite a
million-dollar lobbying campaign from interest
groups and Democrats, no Republicans switched
their votes from opposing the children’s health
measure. This underscores how important it is
to gain support from House and Senate members
prior to the veto override vote.
Therefore, in
response to this challenge, the entire health,
education and labor community have become
completely united for these upcoming votes in
the House and Senate (on the conferenced/coordinated
measure before it is sent to the President).
850 organizations, including FASEB, have signed
onto a
letter facilitated by the Coalition
for Health Funding, a nonprofit alliance of
fifty national organizations that works to
ensure that health discretionary spending is
regarded as a budget priority, to ensure that
the Senate bill passes with an overwhelming
majority. In addition, FASEB worked with
leaders from the Ad Hoc Group for Medical
Research Funding, the Campaign for Medical
Research and Research!America, to request that
every
Senate and
House member support the higher Senate
funding level for NIH when the final bill is
conferenced/negotiated. These three
organizations represent more than 500 patient
groups, scientific and professional societies,
research and academic institutions, and industry
that represent more than 125 million Americans.
FASEB also sent its own
letter to Congressional leaders thanking
them for the increases proposed for NIH, NSF and
DOE and
encouraging them to adopt the higher Senate
funding level for NIH during upcoming conference
negotiations.
You may remember that
many biomedical research groups declined to
support the House L/HHS bill because of concerns
that it would be seen as endorsing a 1.9%
increase for NIH when the Senate’s proposal
provided a 2.8% increase. Many expressed
concern that the 1.9% increase would barely
cover half the rate of inflation for biomedical
research (forecasted to be 3.7% in 2008).
However, at this point in the process, the
entire community realizes that it is no longer
fighting the differences in Congress as much as
the Administration’s insistence that Democrats
must eliminate $11 billion from the overall
L/HHS bill, which would translate to a $279
million cut for NIH in FY2008.
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