Advocacy Alert: 03/13/2006 

Senate will act to address research funding cuts.
Place calls to your Senators right away!

Background

In December, Congress approved the first cuts to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) since 1970 for the current year. In January, the President proposed even deeper cuts for the next fiscal year. The President's budget also proposes deep reductions at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), including a cut of nearly $20 million from chronic disease programs.

This week, possibly as early as Tuesday, March 14, the Senate will vote on the Senate Budget Resolution. This vote will set overall funding limits for all federal spending. As currently drafted, the Senate Budget Resolution CUTS funding for medical research and public health programs. This is very serious situation, but there is a glimmer of hope. 

Two senior Senators -- Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) and Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) -- have offered the SPECTER-HARKIN AMENDMENT to provide a $7 billion increase for health and education programs.  If you care about CFS research, or medical research and education for any other condition, please take action to help pass the Specter-Harkin Amendment.

If this amendment does not pass, the health appropriations committees will not have the authority to respond to requests for increased CFS funding. As we saw last year, the appropriations committees can only spend as much money as they are allocated. 

The SPECTER-HARKIN amendment restores health and education funding to the levels they were at two years ago. That's right -- in two short years, funding for these critical programs has been cut by $7 billion. If we don't reverse the trend this year, the situation will only get worse in the future.

Thank you for joining millions of health advocates across the country to restore funding for crucial health research and education programs.