'You Know The Price We'll Pay In The Years To Come': Dick Durbin Calls On GOP To Save NIH Funding

2 days ago

During remarks on the Senate floor Tuesday, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) called on his Republican colleagues to stand up to President Trump and Elon Musk cutting NIH funding.

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Transcript

00:00And just to, he's left the floor, but to follow up on the comments of the senator from North Carolina,

00:05I would just say that we should all be reminded of the fact that half of the people in America

00:10do not know that their future lies in the Dow Jones average.

00:16They may not own stock, they may own it in a retirement account,

00:20and they don't follow the stock market on a day-to-day basis.

00:24What they do worry about is whether or not they have enough money for groceries

00:28and gasoline for the car to pay the rent or the mortgage,

00:33and perhaps to salt away a little money for education for the kids.

00:37Those are the fundamentals.

00:39I think many of them are concerned, as I am,

00:42that the volatility of our economy at this point does not point in the right direction.

00:47It raises a question as to whether or not decisions are being made,

00:51particularly on tariffs, that are going to have an impact on ordinary working American families,

00:57a negative impact on that basis.

01:00And I think that we all ought to be sensitized to that fact.

01:04You can watch CNBC.

01:06You can commune with the economists of note.

01:11But for most people, it's pretty basic.

01:13Do I have enough money to get to the next paycheck?

01:16A lot of people struggle with that every single day.

01:19That is a reality that we are faced with.

01:21I'm here to discuss another reality.

01:23It's one that you hope you'll never have to think about on a personal basis,

01:27but you know the possibility is always there.

01:31America is a nation of pride, of resilience, of grit, but of all else, we are a nation of hope.

01:39Václav Havel, a Czech statesman and poet, once said,

01:43hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well,

01:47but the certainty that something makes sense regardless of how it turns out.

01:52This, to me, is the essence of medical research.

01:55There are few guarantees when it comes to medical research.

01:59No assurance that any single clinical trial will reveal the best treatment option,

02:04that one experiment will lead to groundbreaking discovery,

02:07that one promising grant application will result in a breakthrough cure.

02:11But there is certainty in funding medical research.

02:16Certainty in knowing that while not all trials, experiments, and grants will result in a breakthrough,

02:22some of them will.

02:24Because of medical research, kids with a simple ear infection or pneumonia

02:27can find relief with antibiotics.

02:31Because of medical research, we have vaccines that have saved tens of millions of lives worldwide.

02:37Because of medical research, we have anesthesia

02:39to allow patients to safely undergo major surgery.

02:43Because of medical research, people are surviving heart attacks,

02:46beating cancer, living with HIV-AIDS,

02:49receiving organ donations,

02:52surviving drug overdoses,

02:53and living longer.

02:56There's a lot more to be done.

02:58So many people are still hoping and praying for more.

03:01The wife, hoping for treatment that will slow down or stop her husband's ALS.

03:07The father or mother, hoping for a cure that saves the life of their child with glioblastoma brain cancer.

03:14The son or daughter, hoping for a medication that helps their mom suffering from Alzheimer's

03:19to remember who she is.

03:21And you know who offers that hope?

03:24The National Institutes of Health.

03:26It is our nation's premier biomedical research agency.

03:31It is considered the gold standard around the world.

03:34For decades, NIH has been a bipartisan success story.

03:39With Congress privatizing the funding of promising,

03:42life-saving medical research in all 50 states,

03:45prioritizing, creating and supporting good-paying jobs in red, blue, and purple states,

03:51and offering real hope to families desperate for it.

03:54Consider this.

03:5699% of all drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration

04:00between 2010 and 2019 were developed with NIH funding.

04:0799%.

04:07See all those ads on television about breakthrough drugs?

04:1199% of them started with the government agency known as the National Institute of Health.

04:16NIH means new cures and treatments.

04:18It's that simple.

04:19And yet, we find ourselves today at a point of decision on the future of medical research in America.

04:26President Trump and his billionaire buddy, Elon Musk,

04:30and our nation's health secretary have decided to take a sledgehammer to NIH and medical research writ large.

04:37They have illegally cut off funding for medical research around the country,

04:42terminated clinical trials in progress,

04:44placed gag orders on researchers,

04:48and fired more than 1,000 NIH employees.

04:51Think of that.

04:521,000 NIH employees have been fired by this administration.

04:57Instead of bolstering medical research, they're breaking it.

05:01Instead of offering hope to patients in need, unfortunately, they're crushing it.

05:05Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and RFK Jr. are either completely oblivious to what they're doing,

05:12or they just don't care.

05:14But you know who isn't oblivious?

05:15Many of my Republican colleagues, many of whom have fought by my side to increase the NIH budget by 60% over the past decade.

05:24This was a bipartisan effort over the last 10 years.

05:28Roy Blunt, conservative Republican senator from Missouri,

05:32was leading the effort most of the time because he was the subcommittee chairman in appropriations for NIH.

05:37In addition to him, Lamar Alexander, a thoughtful, conservative Republican from Tennessee, and Patty Murray.

05:46We're the team, the four of us.

05:48We just kept reminding people year after year, budget after budget,

05:52that medical research would pay off and do so if we committed ourselves to it, and it worked.

06:00Many of my colleagues on the Republican side came to understand that and gave us their support as well,

06:06which is why their silence now, their refusal to say anything or to act in the face of President Trump's dismantling of NIH is just so devastating.

06:18This is a truly bipartisan issue, medical research.

06:22We ought to step up and say to this administration or any administration,

06:26for God's sakes, don't cut back on medical research.

06:30You know the price we'll pay in the years to come.

06:32If Republican senators won't stand up for NIH funding in their states, for constituents in their states, I'm going to do it.

06:41I plan to come to the Senate floor in the coming weeks to talk about the importance of medical research and NIH funding,

06:47even in red states across the country.

06:50Today I'll start with the state of South Dakota, home of the Senate Majority Leader.

06:54In 2024, South Dakota research institutions received nearly $29 million in NIH funding, which supported 453 jobs in South Dakota.

07:07Sanford Research, University of South Dakota, and South Dakota State University were among some of the top NIH-funded institutions in South Dakota.

07:17So what did they do with this federal money?

07:19Could they survive an audit if they had to explain how they spent it?

07:22You decide.

07:24Sanford Research, University of South Dakota researchers, used NIH funding to support their Center for Pediatric Research,

07:32a specific focus on training new scientists to study pediatric diseases.

07:38Is that a priority?

07:40If it's your child or grandchild, you bet it is.

07:42South Dakota State University used NIH funding to increase cervical cancer screening among indigenous women who face higher rates of cervical cancer prevalence and death.

07:54They also used funding in South Dakota to develop new targeted therapies for colorectal cancer that are safer and more effective than current chemotherapy.