In its spending bill for Fiscal 2016, Congress seemed to acknowledge that medical research had been cut too deeply for over a decade. The legislation will boost that funding in the coming months.
“But without reforms to address the basic structural problems in the federal budget, downward pressures on research and other important national priorities can be expected to continue,” warn Concord Coalition Executive Director Robert L. Bixby and Mary Woolley, president and CEO of Research!America, in a Philadelphia Inquirer op-ed.
In its spending bill for Fiscal 2016, Congress seemed to acknowledge that medical research had been cut too deeply for over a decade. The legislation will boost that funding in the coming months.
“But without reforms to address the basic structural problems in the federal budget, downward pressures on research and other important national priorities can be expected to continue,” warn Concord Coalition Executive Director Robert L. Bixby and Mary Woolley, president and CEO of Research!America, in a Philadelphia Inquirer op-ed.
Examples of what’s at stake: cutting-edge immunotherapy work at Penn Medicine’s Abramson Cancer Center and studies across the country on treating Alzheimer’s, diabetes and heart disease.
The key problem areas in the federal budget are not in the “discretionary” spending that Congress approves each year — including for research — but in the unsustainable entitlement programs and the faulty tax system.
“Medical research is a fundamental national priority that has been cheated by our elected officials’ unwillingness to confront and resolve the major problems with our federal budget,” Woolley and Bixby write. “Let’s tackle those problems head-on.”
