Mr. President, last year, 2013, marked the 10-year anniversary of the completion of the historic campaign to double funding for the National Institutes of Health. Beginning in fiscal year 1998, I…
Mr. President, last year, 2013, marked the 10-year anniversary of the completion of the historic campaign to double funding for the National Institutes of Health.
Beginning in fiscal year 1998, I worked with Congressman John Porter and Senator Arlen Specter in our leadership roles on the Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies. In that year, 1998, funding for the National Institutes of Health was $13 billion. By fiscal year 2003, we had increased NIH funding to $27 billion. We doubled funding in 5 years. We said we were, and we laid out a plan under both Republican and Democratic administrations and we got it done. That was a historic milestone for biomedical research in the United States.
Truly, increasing our Nation's investment in NIH was a bold statement of our Nation's commitment to retaining our standing as the undisputed world leader in biomedical research, and we have reaped extraordinary benefits from that investment. We reaped benefits in terms of new treatments, new diagnostics, and the new jobs and economic growth that biomedical research brings.
But where does NIH stand today, 10 years after the historic doubling of funding for biomedical research, which did so much to advance America's economy and our standing in the world? Where are we today? Sadly, as this chart illustrates, we have been falling behind.
So here we are. We got back up to where we should be by doubling the funding. Since that time, it has basically leveled off. We are now short about $8 billion below where we would be if we had just kept up with inflation. So NIH has lost about 20 percent of its purchasing power from that time. Success rates for applicants fell from the traditional range of 25 to 35 percent to just 16 percent last year, 2013. Promising research was not funded, and many young scientists had no choice but to find other occupations. This has had profoundly negative consequences. Our biomedical pipeline is clearly showing the negative effects.
So today I am introducing a bill that allows us to find common ground, on a bipartisan basis, to jump-start our reinvestment in the National Institutes of Health and ensure America's leadership in biomedical research.
Republicans and Democrats may disagree on what level of revenue is appropriate. We disagree about the value of investing in education in order to build a stronger workforce. But I have yet to hear any Senator who disagrees with my view that Federal investments in biomedical research are good for the economy and good for our country.
As the chairman of the appropriations subcommittee that funds NIH, I get letters from Senators every year requesting support for research programs, so I can speak with authority when I say the majority of Senators--from both parties--believe we should be investing more strongly in NIH. That is exactly the aim of the bill I am introducing today. The Accelerating Biomedical Research Act makes NIH a priority in our national budget process by creating a budget cap adjustment for the National Institutes of Health. This bill will put a plan in place for the Appropriations Committee to reverse the 10-year retrenchment in biomedical research funding over the remaining years of the Budget Control Act.
Importantly, the Accelerating Biomedical Research Act is not an appropriation. It is not a mandatory trust fund. It is not a tax credit. The bill that I am introducing does not score for CBO purposes because it does not spend any money now. I am always hearing that we should have a robust debate on the budget and our spending priorities as a country. So this bill starts that debate. I invite Senators to cosponsor this bill if they believe, as I do, that we should change our budget to allow for biomedical research to grow in the United States.
I ask unanimous consent that a list of the organizations who have endorsed this bill be entered into the Record at the end of my remarks.
I believe we must do this. I believe we must do this to save lives and to improve the health of the American people. I also believe we must do it because we know that investing in biomedical research creates jobs and spurs the economy.
Some may say that changing the budget allows for more spending so it should be offset by cuts to other programs. Well, to that I say there can be little doubt that NIH funding abundantly pays for itself in expanded economic activity. Respected economists have studied this, and they have estimated that each dollar of investment in the National Institutes of Health generates anywhere from $1.80 to $3.20 in economic output.
Let me take just one vivid example of the payoffs from our Federal investments in biomedical research.
In 2003 NIH completed the Human Genome Project started about 13 years earlier. In total, the Federal Government invested $3.4 billion of taxpayers' money in sequencing the human genome. That project has had a truly staggering economic impact. As of 2012, it had generated $965 billion in economic activity, personal income exceeding $293 billion, and more than 4.3 million job-years of employment. For every dollar our government spent on the Human Genome Project, America has reaped $178 in economic benefits--for every dollar we invest. And this is just the economic impact. The positive impact in terms of cures discovered and lives saved is incalculable.
But research doesn't have to launch an entire industry to contribute significantly to our economy as the Human Genome Project did. I will give an example from my home State.
Dr. Joseph Walder, a researcher at the University of Iowa, received a $5.7 million research grant many years ago from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. In the course of his research, he developed synthetic DNA and RNA technology. Realizing that
this was a valuable research tool, Dr. Walder launched a company called Integrated DNA Technologies in 1987. Out of a $5.7 million Federal investment came a company with $100 million in annual sales, employing 650 people.
Now, if the creation of all of these companies and products and jobs isn't enough of a reason to expect that this bill will boost the economy and lower the Federal deficit, I have another reason. One of the principal missions of biomedical research is to reduce and improve chronic diseases and health conditions that are a major factor in driving deficit spending. In 2006, economists found that a future 1- percent reduction in mortality rates from cancer would save $500 billion to current and future Americans. A cure for cancer was estimated to save $50 trillion to Americans in future expenditures.
Recent estimates indicate the economic cost of Alzheimer's disease is over $200 billion a year. That is going to rise to over $1 trillion a year by 2050 unless a prevention or cure is found. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that annual costs from undiagnosed diabetes are about $245 billion a year. And a recent study projects that, by 2030, nearly 45 percent of the United States population will face some form of cardiovascular disease, costing a total of $1.2 trillion between now and 2030.
I could go on and on with examples and studies, but no matter what I say, some will say we can't afford this bill. But we can't afford not to do this. The status quo confronts our Nation with what those in the military call a ``clear and present danger.''
The United States has been the global leader in research, but that standing is now in jeopardy. While the United States has been retrenching in biomedical research, other countries, including China, India, and Singapore, have been redoubling their investments and surging forward. Of the 10 leading countries in the field of scientific research, the United States is the only one that has reduced its investment in scientific research.
Let me repeat that. Of the 10 leading countries in the world in the field of scientific research, the United States is the only one that has reduced its investment in scientific research.
According to an NIH study:
Other countries are investing more in biomedical research
relative to the size of their economies. When it comes to
government funding for pharmaceutical industry-performed
research, Korea's government provides seven times more
funding as a share of GDP than does the United States, while
Singapore and Taiwan provide five and three times as much,
respectively. France and the United Kingdom also provide more
than the US, as a share of their economies.
This chart here vividly shows what has been happening in research investment just since 2011 as a percent of GDP: China, Brazil, South Korea, India, UK, France, Japan, Germany, and Russia are increasing. In the United States we are going in the wrong direction.
Dr. Francis Collins, Director of NIH, testified before my subcommittee about the ambitious investments of America's rivals. He said this:
China has made policy changes to invest heavily in the life
sciences industry, moving [China] closer to becoming a world
leader in science and technology by the end of the decade.
Over the past decade, Singapore has also pursued a
prominent role as a global leader in the life sciences.
For example, their pharmaceutical industry R&D funding was
five times greater than that of the United States in 2009
as a share of GDP.
I will say one more thing about China's ambitious plans. China has identified biotechnology as one of seven key ``strategic and emerging pillar'' industries. They have pledged to invest $308.5 billion in biotechnology over the next 5 years. By contrast, the U.S. investment over the same period of time will be roughly $160 billion, just about half of what China is doing.
It is a shocking and disturbing fact that, if current trends continue, the U.S. Government's investment in life sciences research as a share of GDP will soon be about one quarter of what China is doing.
According to the NIH, China already has more gene sequencing capacity than the entire United States, and they have about one third of global capacity.
Imagine that. We are the ones that mapped and sequenced the entire human genome. We are the ones that put the $3.6 billion into that. We reaped some rewards and benefits--as I just said--but right now China has more gene sequencing capacity than we do. That, again, illustrates my point that they are moving ahead and we have sort of slowed down and stopped, resting on our laurels, so to speak.
The budget caps enacted by Congress are forcing disinvestments in a whole range of priorities that are the key to our Nation's prosperity. These disinvestments are having devastating impacts across our economy--lower growth and fewer jobs.
Again, I appreciate there are honest disagreements about the appropriate levels of investment in education, job training, and other domestic priorities. But from countless conversations with Senators from both parties, there seems to be one area of broad agreement, and that is that we should invest robustly in the National Institutes of Health. And that is why I have introduced this bill today. It is time for us on a bipartisan basis to reverse this erosion of support for biomedical research to ensure America's standing as a world leader in this field. This is what we are talking about, a discretionary cap adjustment. That is what our bill would do to allow NIH to make up for lost ground.
Here is what is happening. We are about $8 billion behind. By providing a budget cap adjustment we can close this gap by 2021 and bring it up to where it should be if we could allow for increases due to inflation. Quite frankly, I guess I could argue we have to do even more than that, but this is the minimum we ought to do, a minimum to close the gap in biomedical research.
We have to do this for the health of our people, our economy, and our Federal budget. So I urge my colleagues to join in supporting the Accelerating Biomedical Research Act.
I yield the floor.
