Senator Tom Harkin on HHS Budget

Statement By Senator Harkin At The Hearing To Examine The Us Department Of Health And Human Services Budget

June 9, 2009 -- “Madam Secretary, I welcome you to your first hearing with this Subcommittee.

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“You have a challenging job ahead of you – arguably the most challenging job in the cabinet. Your responsibilities include not only comprehensive health reform, preparing for a possible pandemic influenza, and addressing the costs of entitlements, but also biomedical research, substance abuse prevention, drug safety, and providing health-care services to many of our most vulnerable citizens. I am not quite sure whether to congratulate you, or commiserate with you. But I certainly look forward to working with you cooperatively in any way I can.

“This hearing will focus on your discretionary budget, but, very briefly, I’d like to also mention comprehensive health reform. From our previous conversations, I know you agree with me that prevention and public health must be at the heart of any serious reform of the health care system, and I commend your work in that area. But I also believe that any reform of the health care system must address the injustice of people with severe disabilities who are being forced to spend their lives in nursing homes because we have not provided an option of home-based services for the severely disabled. That is why I have introduced the Community Choice Act, which President Obama strongly supported during the campaign last fall. I look forward to working with you on this important issue.

“Today, I want to talk about your Fiscal Year 2010 budget, and also about the funding included in the Recovery Act passed earlier this year. That bill included $10 billion for NIH, $1.1 billion for comparative effectiveness research, $700 million for prevention and wellness activities, $2 billion for discretionary health information technology activities, as well as funds for Head Start, Child Care, the Community Services Block Grant, and Health Professions.

“I want to work with you to make sure that we spend this money wisely – not only to stimulate the economy and help those hit hardest by the recession, but also to lay the groundwork for comprehensive health reform.

“I am particularly interested in the funds we included for prevention activities. We purposely gave you a lot of flexibility – almost complete flexibility – on the use of those funds. However, we did so with the understanding that you would work with us and share your plans before spending those funds. I expect that you will do that before finalizing any spending plans in this area.

“Again, we welcome you to the Subcommittee. Now, I will turn to our new Ranking Member, Senator Cochran, for his opening statement.”

Source: Senator Tom Harkin