Steve Cohen

Mr. COHEN

Mr. COHEN. Mr. Speaker, the education system in our country needs help. But instead of helping education through additional funding, the sequester, which I voted against as a bad idea, cuts education services to the children in our country who are most at risk. $740 million will be cut from Title I education programs that provide financial assistance to improve academic achievement of disadvantaged students. Tennessee would receive $14.5 million less and, in Memphis, almost every single school relies on those funds. Head Start would be stripped of $406 million. These programs are relied upon by low-income families, families that need more assistance to assure that their children have a safe place to learn while their parents work to pay their bills. Nationwide, nearly 1.2 million students are affected by Head Start cuts. Tennessee will lose at least $7 million and, in Memphis, it means 31,000 children will lose access to affordable early education. As a result of this reduction in Federal funding and the needs to reprioritize our allocation of Title I funding, Memphis City Schools will be forced to eliminate approximately 80 of their pre-K classrooms for the next year. Eighty-two classrooms are being closed, affecting 1,640 children, more than a third of the students. The sequester needs to go.

Mr. COHEN

Mr. COHEN. Mr. Speaker, today was one of the saddest days this House of Representatives has probably ever seen. The 40-hour workweek, a great part of our heritage since 1938, destroyed. Don't get overtime, get comp time. Employer decides if you get comp time, when you get it, when he wants you to have it. Assuming that everybody around here that's working is working 40 hours and wants to get some extra time is well-heeled and got time to take off and doesn't need that extra money, that time-and-a-half overtime, and they've got time to go out and play 18 holes of golf or something. Most hardworking Americans need that overtime to take care of their families and to get through from day to day. But today this House voted to take away that opportunity for employees to have the 40-hour week and overtime thereafter. It was a shameless day. We need to look out for our workers and preserve American rights, not give more to the 1 percent, more control and more money away from the 99 percent.

Mr. COHEN

Mr. COHEN. Mr. Speaker, last night, there was historic and important news from the Middle East. For the second time, the Israeli and the Turkish governments met and feel they're close to having an agreement to renew their diplomatic relations, which for 3 years have not existed. There could be nothing more important to peace in the Middle East and America's interests than the Turkish and the Israeli Governments working together. Having that historic relationship mended came about because President Obama, on his trip to Israel, urged Prime Minister Netanyahu to apologize for the incidents with the flotilla. He did so. That was a major act on Prime Minister Netanyahu's part. And for Prime Minister Erdogan to accept it was important too. They're working together. They're very close. I'm pleased with both the Turkish and the Israeli Governments and their leaders, and I thank President Obama for his initiative.

Mr. COHEN

Mr. COHEN. Mr. Speaker, today, in Memphis, Tennessee, a great lady passed away--a lady who is as fierce, as brave, and as courageous a woman who's ever lived in this country: a lady by the name of Maxine Smith. Maxine Smith was the executive secretary of the NAACP from 1962 up to around 2000. She served on the Memphis City School Board from 1971 to 1995 and was on the National Board of the NAACP. She helped take Memphis beyond Jim Crow and beyond segregation into a great city in America and America's mainstream. Because the scourge of discrimination and desegregation stained this country, she was not allowed to enroll at Memphis State University. So she went to Spelman and then to Middlebury and got a master's degree. She went to work to help others and spent her life fighting against discrimination in all ways and all manners. She served on the State Board of Education in Tennessee and made sure people got a good education, whether they were White or Black; and she overcame all of the hate and discrimination that she faced. She was a beautiful woman who lived Dr. King's dream--seeing people and judging them by the content of their character and not the color of their skin. She was a person to be emulated, honored, and remembered. She had a great life--a life extremely well lived. I will miss her and so will this Nation.

Mr. COHEN

Mr. COHEN. Many people have been concerned about the sequester and the effects it has had on airplane flights. And I am, too. People are delayed a half hour, an hour, or whatever, and that's bad. But the biggest thing people ought to be upset about the sequester is the fact that it takes $1.6 billion out of the National Institutes of Health. Mr. Speaker, each person in this room at one time will face a rendezvous with destiny. Whether that rendezvous is cancer, heart disease, stroke, Alzheimer's, AIDS, diabetes, or Parkinson's, the National Institutes of Health is working for cures and treatments. By taking $1.6 billion from what is our personal Department of Defense, we are going to put certain people at risk for death and for trauma. That is wrong. There is no more important funding that we do than the National Institutes of Health. That's our opportunity to save people's lives. I will introduce a bill to take that funding out of the sequester. I ask my colleagues in a bipartisan manner to put the people first. The real enemy is disease. Fund the National Institutes of Health fully.

Mr. COHEN

Mr. COHEN. Last night, PBS aired the ``Memphis Soul'' performance recorded last week at the White House. The performance featured many songs that were recorded at Stax Records located in Memphis. In 1998, Memphis civic leaders raised more than $10 million to build the Stax Museum on the original site of Stax Records. The museum honors all of the artists who recorded at Stax, including Isaac Hayes, Al Green, Otis Redding, Booker T and the MGs, and others. From Eddie Floyd's ``Knock on Wood'' to Booker T and the MGs' classic ``Green Onions,'' Isaac Hayes' ``Shaft,'' and Sam and Dave's ``Soul Man,'' the recordings at Stax Records made significant contributions to the music of the era. Beyond honoring its history, Stax is about education. In 2005, the Soulsville Charter School opened its doors to 60 sixth graders. Now expanded to grades 6-12, the 2013 class of Soulsville Charter School has a 100 percent college acceptance rate and scholarships. I encourage everyone to come to Memphis to visit the Stax Museum and see the Soulsville Charter School to learn more about Memphis' contribution to music. I also hope you will tune in to PBS this afternoon to watch another performance of ``Memphis Soul'' at 5 o'clock eastern, 4 o'clock central.

Mr. COHEN

Mr. COHEN. I rise today to recognize the 40th anniversary of the founding of FedEx, one of the world's great companies. According to business lore, CEO Fred Smith originally introduced his idea for FedEx in a Yale economics paper that got him a C grade. Today, 40 years later, we can all appreciate the merit of that C paper after the company originally set up shop in 1973 near the Memphis airport with 14 aircraft and 186 packages set for delivery. That first day, FedEx flew to 25 U.S. cities from its home base in Memphis, which remains its world headquarters. Today, FedEx has grown to ship more than 9 million parcels daily across the globe. FedEx and Fred Smith have also shown great generosity to the country, and Memphis is lucky and proud that it's our home company. Fred Smith, a combat marine, who served two tours of duty in Vietnam, served as the cochair of the World War II Memorial Committee to build a memorial here in Washington. It used to be said that what's good for General Motors is good for the Nation, but now I think what's good for FedEx is good for the Nation--absolutely, positively. I congratulate Fred Smith and FedEx on 40 years of great service, and I look forward to another 40 years of innovation and service.

Mr. COHEN

Mr. COHEN. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Ohio mentioned the concert that the President hosted with PBS and the Grammys on Tuesday, and did a poor imitation, I guess, of Justin Timberlake on ``(Sittin' on) the Dock of the Bay.'' It was a phenomenal shout-out to Memphis music; and while there were a lot of great performers there, I want to put a particular shout-out to Ms. Cyndi Lauper because she's special. She did another Otis Redding song, ``Try a Little Tenderness,'' and it was a phenomenal performance. I would suggest to some of my colleagues on other side of the aisle that they ought to try a little tenderness on occasion. Ms. Lauper is special. She did an album called ``Memphis Blues'' in 2010. It was one of the best albums of the year. It brought blues back. She had Memphians B.B. King and Ann Peebles and Charlie Musselwhite on the album. She's a phenomenal lady, and I give a special shout-out to Cyndi Lauper and Memphis music.

Mr. COHEN

Mr. COHEN. I figured it was, and it's just unbelievable. And last week it was cold. I mean, I had my winter suit when I went home, and I brought my summer stuff here today. The heat does have effects, and you brought up some of the other issues. It's not just the polar bears. I'm a big fan of the polar bears, but they're going to be eliminated because they're going to lose their ability to survive in their natural climate. Also, the flora and the fauna are at risk. What Mr. Blumenauer mentioned about defense made me think of a long time ago when I was in college. There was a man I thought a lot of named Don Wolfson. He was a smart man from a family that had knowledge of power in this country. We were talking about who was the most powerful person in the country and what were the most powerful interests. I had said something about the military industrial complex and how President Eisenhower had warned us in his last address about the military industrial complex. What he warned us about really was the impact they would have on the budget and all those things. But what Don Wolfson told me was the military industrial complex is all tied to one thing: oil. That's what it's about. The military runs on oil. And as Mr. Blumenauer so well pointed out, they're the most consuming user of oil, and they also at the same time are spending much of their efforts defending the trade routes to get oil. That's why the 5th Fleet is over there in Bahrain, and it is defending the Strait of Hormuz and why Iran has particular significance in the Middle East. It's amazing what President Eisenhower warned us about, and I don't know if that was part of his warning, but maybe there was more truth to what he said and we probably should spend a part of each day reflecting on President Eisenhower's warning about the military industrial complex and what it has done to our Nation, because that's where the budget has really got a great problem, and that all goes back to our dependence on foreign oil.

Mr. COHEN. Thank you. I appreciate your leadership on this issue and your scheduling this Special Order. Dr. James Hansen did retire. He is considered the foremost climatologist in the world. As I understand it, he shared in a Nobel Prize in 2007 on this general type of issue. He's been the leading proponent of watching out for the future. The Keystone pipeline, he's the clarion call, I guess, on the problems that that would cause to the environment in the future. Because the tar sands, to mine, is a very carbon-intensive activity. You take away the forest. You also have to use a lot of water and a lot of energy in the production. Just the production of the tar sands causes great damage to the environment, let alone the potential for damage to our country when they would travel through the pipelines. Then, when they're burnt, that's, I guess, lighting the carbon bomb and letting it go off. But Dr. Hanson studied climate and was one of the first to warn on this issue. He has retired, so we will have his voice. I live in Memphis. It's kind of the center of the region, Oklahoma over, for tornadoes. Tornadoes have been much, much more prominent in the United States. This just isn't a quirk. Mother Nature can have her times and certain variances in her schedule, but it's obvious what's been happening with the increase in tornadoes, the droughts, the floods. The Mississippi River, it's been the lowest it's ever been in spots--and it's flooded. It had the worst floods in Memphis ever about 2 or 3 years ago, and this year the river was its lowest. We've gone from its highest to its lowest, and something's happening; it's obvious something is happening. Scientists, almost to one, tell us that this is because of what we've done to the environment. There might be two out of 100 scientists. It seems so unfortunate that the other side always grabs one or two of those people, rather than the 98. We all have a debt and a duty to protect the Earth and, I think, looking out for issues where we do conserve, as you've said. I've got a company in Memphis I met with last week--they're really in Mississippi--called Griffin, and they have found a way to come up with a system that when a vehicle idles--and they're talking about, in their specific situation, armored cars that have a lot of going around and they idle their engines when they pick up their financial deposits--it costs a lot to the environment in burning of oil when the car is running. They've got a way where the car can be turned off and the idling of the engine can stop, but, nevertheless, the vehicle still gets air-conditioning and power. It can save a tremendous amount of gasoline and protect the environment. Hopefully, they can come within some grants that are already available to make companies that need to retrofit their vehicles to use that, but it is like raising our CAFE standards. The best way to save energy is not to have to use it and to conserve on that. There are opportunities we have. Obviously, we have to concentrate on this. We've got to look to alternatives, and wind and solar are two of them. It's a disaster waiting to happen, and we just can't close our eyes to it. It's important that we take a leadership role in the world. Mr. Blumenauer, I would like to ask you, the Defense Department that raised those issues about it being important to our national defense, were they referring to the droughts that they foresaw coming in the future with climate change and what might happen in some of those countries where they have less opportunity to produce food and have water, et cetera?

Mr. COHEN. I appreciate your bringing up the idea of the hottest year. In Memphis, it does occasionally get hot, but it also does in Washington. I think it's supposed to be 90 today. I suspect, and somebody is going to be able to prove me wrong, but this may be the hottest----

Mr. COHEN. Mr. Blumenauer, let me ask you this--and we've worked together on the Keystone XL issue--When people come to you and say that it's going to create all these jobs, we need jobs and they can get this oil, these tar sands to China if they need to by going to the West, what do you tell folks about those jobs and the effect it will have on the future?

Mr. COHEN. Memphis borders Arkansas, and there was some kind of a pipeline problem over there recently. I think it might have been Exxon. They had a leak. That's kind of an expensive process. That's similar to the Keystone pipeline; isn't it? It gives us kind of a warning of what could occur.

Mr. COHEN. I just want to thank you for your leadership, and it's been an honor to join you today on the floor on this issue. It's important to be addressed.

Mr. COHEN

Mr. COHEN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor the life of Dr. Jacquelin Perry, a renowned orthopedic surgeon and physical therapist known for her revolutionary work on treating Polio. Dr. Perry was born on May 31, 1918 in Denver, Colorado and was raised in Los Angeles, California. She attended the University of California, Los Angeles and graduated in 1940 with a bachelor's degree in Physical Education. After earning her degree, she joined the United States Army and trained to be a physical therapist at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. She was then assigned to a hospital in Hot Springs, Arkansas, where many polio patients were being treated. She continued her education and in 1950, Dr. Perry was one of seven women who received a medical degree from the University of California, San Francisco in a class of seventy-six graduates. When her residency was completed in San Francisco, Dr. Perry was recruited to work at Rancho Los Amigos National Rehabilitation Center. While there, she created a program for patients suffering from polio and other diseases and helped develop the ``Halo,'' a metal ring that screwed into the skull to immobilize a patient's spine and neck that were weakened by polio complications. From 1972 to the late 1990s, she taught at the University of Southern California's School of Medicine. While there, Perry established a scholarship for the study of the human gait, which she used to research how forward motion is achieved in the legs. During her lifetime, she wrote over four hundred peer-reviewed papers and contributed to numerous scientific publications. Her book, ``Gait Analysis: Normal and Pathological Function,'' published in 1992, has become a standard textbook for orthopedists, physical therapists and other rehabilitation professionals. Dr. Jacquelin Perry passed away on March 11, 2013, at 94 years of age in her Downey, California home. Although she suffered from Parkinson's disease, it did not deter her from attending work a week before her death. Dr. Perry leaves behind a legacy as an inventive physician, author and teacher. She lived an extraordinary life, and gave her time, her effort and her expertise to the advancement of medicine, and to the struggle to defeat Polio and Post-Polio syndrome. As a survivor of Polio myself, I ask my colleagues to join me in recognizing the life and work of Dr. Jacquelin Perry.

Mr. COHEN

Mr. COHEN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize the storied career of America's foremost climatologist, and the world's, Dr. James Hansen. Last week Dr. Hansen retired from his position as head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. After 46 years at NASA, he's leaving the agency to focus his efforts on the political and legal efforts to limit greenhouse gases. He started his career by working on the atmosphere of the planet Venus in the sixties. Luckily for the world, he changed his emphasis to the atmosphere of the Earth. Dr. Hansen is perhaps known best for his 1988 testimony to the Senate committees that helped raise the initial broad awareness of global warming across the United States. He sounded the warning bell of the effects of climate change, and can be credited with bringing the issue to the forefront of the American conscience. Dr. Hansen, who fittingly called the proposed building of the Keystone XL pipeline akin to the ``lighting of the carbon bomb,'' is one of the world's leading advocates of decreased fossil fuel consumption. While his departure from the Federal climate research community will undoubtedly leave a gaping hole in NASA's climate program, I look forward to the role Dr. Hansen will take on his retirement as he pursues actions to limit emissions and his fight against the development of Keystone and other tar sands pipelines. The future of our planet rests in the hands of scientists like Dr. Hansen, and I ask my colleagues to join me in wishing him the best of luck in his retirement. I truly hope he can continue the work that he has successfully pursued throughout his storied career in this new capacity.

Mr. COHEN

Mr. COHEN. Mr. Speaker, tonight PBS and the Grammys will continue a series of concerts at the White House, and tonight's concert will feature Memphis soul. Memphis is a city known around the world for music, whether it's Sun Records and Elvis Presley and Sam Phillips or the studios which will be featured tonight, Stax Records and Hi Records. Sam Moore, Justin Timberlake, Mavis Staples, Charlie Musselwhite, Ben Harper, Sam Moore of Sam and Dave, they'll all be there. Memphis music is part of America's cultural history, a living, breathing part of our culture. We're pleased that PBS and the Grammys chose Memphis soul to be featured tonight. The President will be there. Without Al Green, he'll have to do ``Let's Stay Together'' by himself. We look forward to that. We ask all of you to come to Memphis, Tennessee, and visit America's great reservoir of music history.

Mr. COHEN

Mr. COHEN. People sometimes ask why we can't find common ground. There's an area we should be able to find common ground on--and we don't--and that's funding for the National Institutes of Health, which is going to be cut in the sequester by close to a billion dollars. There was an amendment in the Senate that tried to put funding back in the continuing resolution for NIH, and it failed on a party-line vote, with 54 Democrats and Independents voting ``yes'' and 46 Republicans voting ``no.'' Republicans say the reason they want to cut spending and voted the sequestration in is we're putting a debt on the next generation. Let me submit, Mr. Speaker, that the research that's done at the National Institutes of Health to find cures for cancer, heart disease, diabetes, Alzheimer's, AIDS, and post-polio cures and treatments will affect the next generation more than this generation. We talk about the Department of Defense. The Department of Defense should be the National Institutes of Health, because the enemy is disease, and we need to conquer it and keep our loved ones alive and keep ourselves alive and have better cures. We talk about infrastructure--and I support that--but the most important infrastructure is the infrastructure of the human body. And that's what the National Institutes of Health works on. We should work together and fund the National Institutes of Health for all of our constituents.

Mr. COHEN

Mr. COHEN. Thank you, Mr. Van Hollen. I appreciate the time. The thing that disturbs me the most about this budget is its inability to understand what our priorities should be. The Republican budget keeps the defense budget at $550 billion. There is no question we need a Defense Department, but I don't think the other side understands what the real enemy is. The enemy to my constituents and each of us is not lurking overseas. It is disease. And to each American who will suffer from or has a family member suffering from Alzheimer's or AIDS or cancer or heart disease, diabetes, Parkinson's, post-polio, or whatever, they want cures and treatments. The National Institutes of Health are cut in this budget by at least $1.6 billion. It is a $30 billion budget. The Defense Department is $550 billion. I submit to you, Mr. Chairman, our enemy is disease. The department of defense for the human being and the human body is the National Institutes of Health. It is someplace the two parties should be able to come together and agree that we need to fund research, which creates jobs and finds cures and treatments. The other side talks about what this is going to do to children and grandchildren. I have heard people talk about their children and grandchildren and what their mothers would want. Their mothers want their children to live long lives and not to suffer from cancer and to get cures and to get treatments.

Mr. COHEN. The cures and the treatments are going to benefit the next generation and the generation after that more than this generation. This is a place where spending dollars creates jobs, saves lives, and benefits future generations. Most research that has been done in this country that has come up with cures and treatments has been funded by the government or at least helped by the government, and that continues to this day. People say we should be different than Cyprus and Greece and Spain and Portugal; and we are, because we funded those researches and we have come up with the cures and the treatments. That is why this is the greatest country on the face of the Earth. We need to see that the National Institutes of Health are funded at a greater level and not diminished.

Mr. COHEN

Mr. COHEN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to share my grave concerns about the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, the existence of which is awaiting a decision by the administration. Last week, 84 of my colleagues--82 Republicans and 2 Democrats-- introduced H.R. 3, a bill that would approve the construction and maintenance of the Keystone XL pipeline. The world's foremost climatologist, Dr. James Hansen--and one of the first scientists to warn of the dangers of burning carbon fuel and a partial recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize--has likened the building and use of the Keystone pipeline to the lighting of a carbon bomb--game over. When you brush aside the studies by TransCanada and other oil companies and you analyze the pure scientific studies, every analysis clearly demonstrates that the Keystone XL pipeline poses major threats at every turn in its extraction, its transportation, its refining, and its consumption--threats to our Earth. The truth of the matter is the U.S. isn't even going to be using those fossil fuels transported by that pipeline; they're going straight to China. In fact, the only proposed feasible method of getting those Canadian tar sands to China or any other country is by building the Keystone XL pipeline to feed into the port in Houston, Texas. I urge my colleagues to stop the Keystone XL pipeline, avoid lighting that carbon bomb in our country, oppose H.R. 3, and return our focus to initiatives that center on true energy independence through renewable resources and greener production. Save the Earth.

Mr. COHEN

Mr. COHEN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor a champion for the rights of women, a leader in her community and a stalwart for Civil Rights, Minerva Johnican, who passed away in her hometown of Memphis, Tennessee. I was proud to call her my friend and she will be greatly missed throughout the City of Memphis. Minerva was born in Memphis on November 16, 1938 and was the sixth of seven children to John Bruce and Annie B. Johnican. She attended Hamilton Elementary and High School and began her college studies at Central State College in Ohio before graduating from Tennessee State University in 1960. After graduating from college, Minerva earned her certificate in library science from the University of Memphis in 1965. She served in the Memphis City Schools system as a teacher and librarian for a total of 18 years, and later, she became the head librarian at Colonial Elementary School. She was always active in politics. However, her interest crystallized in 1967 when she was driving home from school and heard on the radio that a group of ministers were maced while marching for the rights of sanitation workers in downtown Memphis. From this experience, she became an instrumental member of Citizens on the Move for Equality, which advocated for higher wages for sanitation workers. In 1971, she founded the Inner City Voter Education Committee that helped inner-city 18-year-olds register to vote. During this time, she also founded the Volunteer Women's Round Table, which was a coalition of women from different racial backgrounds who worked to support women in the Democratic Party. Additionally, in a sign of her future political aspirations, Minerva worked on Shirley Chisholm's presidential campaign. Over the next 15 years, Minerva's political accomplishments broke several glass ceilings for African-Americans and women. In 1975, Minerva became the first woman to serve on the Shelby County Quarterly Court, now called the Shelby County Commission, and held this seat for two four-year terms. I was honored to work with her on the Board of Commissioners and one of our proudest achievements was establishing the MED Hospital when others wanted a smaller hospital. In 1983, she became the first African-American elected to represent an at-large district on the Memphis City Council. As a City Councilwoman, she founded the Building Better Bridges for Memphis Task Force, which encouraged African-Americans and Caucasians in Memphis to work together on community problems. In 1987, Minerva came in second in a six-way race for city mayor. Not to be discouraged from public office, in 1990, she became the first African-American and the first woman to be elected Shelby County Criminal Court Clerk. During her time as County Clerk, she automated the Clerk's office and implemented computers to maintain records, making it easier and more efficient to serve the needs of Memphians and staff. Her vision for improving the County Clerk's Office earned three national awards. After leaving office in 1994, Minerva worked as a managing loan officer at Mid-America Mortgage and transferred her skills into opening up her own company, OMO Mortgage Financial Services. Although she no longer served in a public office, her passion for public service and community involvement continued. She was a vital member and supporter of my campaigns in 2006 and 2008 and she served as Co-Campaign Manager for Herman Morris's mayoral run. Minerva also served on the board of directors for the Mid-South Muscular Dystrophy Association, Mid-South Chapter of the ACLU, NAACP, and numerous other organizations. Throughout her public and private sector work, Minerva received countless recognition for her diligence and commitment to the city of Memphis. The Women's Foundation for a Greater Memphis honored her with the Legends Award in 2009. In addition, she was awarded with the Distinguished Leadership Award from the National Conference of Christians and Jews, History Makers Award from the National Council of Negro Women, and the NAACP Life Membership. Sadly, Minerva lost her battle with cancer on Friday, March 8, 2013 at 74 years of age. She will be remembered as a pioneer for her tireless public service at a time when women were not expected to take a leading role. Her dedication to improving her community is unparalleled. Minerva's passion led her to take risks during an era of heightened racial tensions and to encourage people from across racial lines to work together for the betterment of the city. Hers was a life well-lived. Thank you, Minerva, for coming our way.

Mr. COHEN

Mr. COHEN. The Ryan budget. In the words of the great Republican President, whom the Republicans like to remember: There they go again. It's the same budget. It's catering to the wealthy, and it's cutting the middle class. It's reducing the top tax rate to 25 percent, which will give the wealthiest $200,000 a piece in tax breaks, and it continues the sequestration--a stupid, meat-ax approach to our budget that cuts $1.6 billion from the National Institutes of Health. Does anybody out there, Mr. Speaker, have cancer? heart disease? Is anybody thinking about some relative who might have Alzheimer's? AIDS? post-polio? diabetes? Cures and treatments come from the National Institutes of Health, and you're not going to get them if they cut $1.6 billion to $1.8 billion out of it. The cures and treatment will benefit the next generation more than this generation, and that's what we should be doing is investing there. This foolish, meat-ax approach is to be continued with the Ryan budget, and it will cost us lives and stop us from being a leader in research and innovation. We need to have a smart budget and invest in the National Institutes of Health and preserve our human infrastructure.

Mr. COHEN

Mr. COHEN. Mr. Speaker, the other day, it became public that Valerie Harper, the star of ``Rhoda,'' was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. She publicly went forward with that, and it was very touching. I saw her on the morning news when she talked about it. She said that she's doing chemotherapy, she has maybe 3 months--she doesn't know how much--to live, and she said her husband says that if we can slow this thing down, more stuff may come up. They're working fast and furiously for all of us. They're not working for Valerie Harper because she played Rhoda, but they're doing this for all cancer patients. And the people that are doing this for all cancer patients--the doctors, the universities, and the scientists--are funded by the National Institutes of Health, all of which will get a 5\1/2\ percent cut in their budget because of the sequestration. This is another example of why it was wrong for us to let the sequestration go into effect and why it's wrong for us not to make cuts that make sense. We need to put more and more dollars for cancer patients, for people with diabetes, people with Alzheimer's, people with AIDS, and people with illnesses that can and will be cured. If they can stay around for a little longer, they can come up with a cure and save people's lives. We don't need to defund or reduce the funding for the National Institutes of Health.

Mr. COHEN

Mr. COHEN. I join in concern about our budget. Advancements to health would be cut in a major way. When I was a child, I had polio, and it has effects on people who have polio in later years. But because of the Federal Government's investment in research like the Salk vaccine and the Sabin vaccine, it has saved many families and children from that devastating disease. And around the world it's been successful, too. There are other diseases like heart disease, Alzheimer's, and cancer that the National Institutes of Health is primarily responsible for the research. I'm worried about health and also jobs, and a major driver of jobs is research and development, education, and infrastructure spending by the Federal Government. Most of our great advances, whether it's railroads or the Internet or health care, have come through Federal Government partnerships with the private sector. We need to continue those to create a middle class--consumers that can grow our economy out of these problems. It's not just President Obama who says it. It's also who I call the three wise men: Krugman, Stiglitz, and Robert Reich. Austerity hasn't worked. We need to invest in America and grow our economy.