The Fourth of July Congressional recess has passed and the full House is currently voting on the Fiscal Year (FY) 2008 Labor, Health and Human Services and Education (LHHS) Appropriations bill. The funding levels for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Cancer Institute (NCI) are not near what we want. Now what?
It’s time to say it even LOUDER — Research Cures Cancer!!
One of the major sources of cancer research funding comes from the federal government. The FY08 levels are not sufficient to continue the progress we’ve made.
I get as frustrated as you do. Year after year you write the same letters and give the same talking points to your Members of Congress yet the numbers do not seem to be at the appropriate levels. We can’t give up our fight!! Your job as an advocate is to keep the pressure on Congress.
Look at the recent debate over the immigration bill. Congressional offices were flooded with letter, emails, and calls from constituents mostly against the bill. What happened? The bill did not pass.
Constituents can impact their Members of Congress.
The next step is for the LHHS bill to go to conference. The conference committee is appointed by both chambers to resolve disagreements on a particular bill. The conference committee is usually composed of the senior Members of the standing committees of the House and Senate that originally considered the legislation. This committee issues a conference report which must then be approved by both House and Senate and signed by the President.
We still have time!! Keep up the good work.
Leave a Reply
Your comments are welcome. However, specific medical advice will not be provided. Generic QUESTIONS can be directed to our Answer Line team at http://fightcolorectalcancer.org/awareness/answer-line or by calling us at 1-877-427-2111 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM Eastern time, Monday – Friday. We urge you to consult with a qualified physician for diagnosis and for answers to your personal questions. Fight Colorectal Cancer is not responsible for the medical accuracy of any comments left by persons other than Fight Colorectal Cancer staff members. Fight Colorectal Cancer staff members monitor comments and may respond publicly where appropriate.
Please note that we automatically publish the name that you enter next to your post. Also note that our pages are automatically indexed by Google and other search engines, and your name may therefore appear in search results on those sites. So if you wish to remain anonymous please use a different name or enter 'Anon' as the name.
We regret that we are unable to privately answer questions left as comments. So please do not include your phone number, email or mailing address in the body of your comment.