GOP voted against funding a cure for cancer to hurt Biden
Another reminder how Republican politicians are just sociopaths.
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President Joe Biden is scrambling to fund his cancer moonshot and its ambitious goal of cutting the death rate by half — an aim close to his heart that’s no longer a bipartisan priority.
Lawmakers backed the initiative during the final days of Barack Obama’s presidency, passing the 21st Century Cures Act, and allotting $1.8 billion to the cause, nearly unanimously. Then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) called it “the most significant legislation passed by this Congress.”
But times have changed. The spending package Congress passed in March doesn’t reup Cures moonshot money that dried up at the end of last year. Lawmakers rejected Biden’s request to fund Cures this year and also cut off his moonshot’s most direct funding stream.
The new budget is tight across the board, reflecting Republicans’ control of the House, deficit concerns and, not least, their desire to deny Biden a win months before the election. Congress’ decision has left Biden scrambling to fill the gap.
“Actions have consequences. Arbitrarily calling for spending cuts means the money will come from somewhere,” Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.), who with former Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.) spearheaded the Cures law in 2016, told POLITICO in an email. “It is a shame we cannot find more funding for cancer research and that this work will be impacted by partisan efforts to slash spending.”
Republicans see the cuts differently.
“When you’re running a $1.6 trillion deficit, spending cuts aren’t the problem,” Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), the new chair of the House Appropriations Committee, told POLITICO. “We’ve been very generous,” he added, referencing the hundreds of millions in funding since the Cures law passed.
The moonshot is important, Cole said, but the magnitude of the deficit requires tough choices and compromise on entitlement costs that Democrats aren’t willing to make.
Rep. Michael Burgess (R-Texas), an OB/GYN who’s co-chair of the GOP Doctors Caucus, argues that the next big health care bill needs to focus on how to pay for medical innovation and make it affordable.
The White House offers a holistic perspective on the funding fallout. “We are well prepared to take forward the cancer moonshot in a tough funding cycle,” Danielle Carnival, deputy assistant to the president for the cancer moonshot, told POLITICO. “We avoided the critical cuts that the Republicans were proposing” to the broader National Institutes of Health budget.
“This is personal to them,” Carnival said of the president and first lady Jill Biden. The initial moonshot program, launched under Obama, was named after Biden’s son Beau, who died of brain cancer in 20
To get cancer funding back on track, Biden requested mandatory moonshot funding in his fiscal year 2025 budget request last month. The request both signals the president’s commitment to the moonshot and foreshadows his priorities for a second term, but it’s not money he gets without Congress’ assent.
Such funding would require Cures-style legislation before it could be distributed to agencies like the NIH. In other words, it’s a multi-step Hail Mary so long as Congress is divided.
That has advocates of increased cancer research worried.
“If not this administration, then who?” Karen Knudsen, CEO of the American Cancer Society, asked, citing Biden’s personal commitment. “We really look for this administration to lead.”
In the meantime, Biden’s leaning on the agencies to keep moonshot programs going and pursuing private sector help that costs the government nothing. Last month, he said the country’s largest health insurers were expanding services to help patients and their families navigate health care treatments for cancer.
But there’s only so much he can do, said Rep. David Trone (D-Md.), a cancer survivor on the Appropriations Committee who represents a district close to NIH headquarters: “Without funding, you can’t hire the best researchers, you can’t acquire cutting-edge technology. Put simply, you can’t innovate.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/04/29/congress-is-killing-bidens-cancer-moonshot-00154718