The White House administration will ask Congress for $1 billion in mandatory funding to support President Barack Obama’s new “moonshot” initiative to find a cure for cancer.
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In a statement on the White House’s website, the vice president said the project was a “new national commitment to ending cancer as we know it”.
Mr. Obama announced the initiative in his State of the Union speech January 12 and put Vice President Joe Biden in charge of the effort.
Obama’s meeting with House Speaker Paul Ryan on Tuesday is his first since the Wisconsin Republican was elected speaker in October.
The National Cancer Institute’s (NCI) budget has been flat during Obama’s presidency.
Earnest said the president spent time during the meeting laying out five areas where he’s hopeful the White House can work with the GOP-controlled Congress this year, including Puerto Rico’s financial crisis, the Trans-Pacific free-trade deal, fighting opioid abuse, pursuing cures for cancer and criminal justice reform. We will speed the development, evaluation, and optimization of safe cancer vaccines targeting unique features of individual cancers. The work that the Vice President will be undertaking will ensure just that – bringing together all parties, breaking down silos, and sharing data to generate new ideas and new breakthroughs.
The president will also propose special fund to be controlled by the vice president, which will focus on “high-risk, high-return research”. “We urge President Obama to include sufficient funds to support the “moonshot” initiative in his FY17 budget proposal”.
In another effort to do away with the ACA, Republicans in Congress filed a lawsuit against the Obama administration for appropriating money from the Department of Treasury without Congressional approval. More details on that fund will be released in coming weeks.
Scott says the additional $755 million, if approved, represents “an increase of about 15 percent over what the federal government is already spending to fight cancer, the nation’s second leading cause of death”.
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Americans care deeply about advancing research for health across all diseases. Though not specifically stated, most of the money will be received by the National Institutes of Health which conducts medically relevant researches.
