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Harry Reid Holds NIH Funding Hostage

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) responded to a question about funding for children's cancer research by asking, "Why would we do that?" Republicans pounced on the remark as evidence that Reid cared less for sick children than for his own partisan position. While Reid tried to recover from the gaffe, what he says he really meant was just as bad, or perhaps worse: he wanted to fund cancer trials, but wouldn't unless the House accepted everything else he wanted. In effect, he is holding every program hostage until he gets his way.

After Senator Reid disingenously complained on the Senate floor that children with cancer would be shut out of clinical trials because of the government shutdown, the House passed a Continuing Resolution that funded the National Institutes of Health (NIH). 

The real significance of the comment is not that Reid won't fund cancer research, because Reid is in favor of that. It's that he thinks Congress should not exercise control over what gets funded and what doesn't.

Reid's explanation was in many ways worse than the gaffe

“What I told Dana Bash, who is a fine reporter, is that we care about all of these things,” he continued. “We care about our state parks, we care about our veterans, but we can’t fall into the trap…of Cruz-led Republicans. That is this…we’ll cherry pick…and finally at the end, everything will be open except for ObamaCare.”

Congress' job, and especially that of the House, is exactly to cherry-pick.

The shutdown battle is a fundamental constitutional power struggle between the branches, with the Senate fighting on the side of the Executive against the House. As Mike Needham points out in The Federalist,


They noticed it over at Conservative Treehouse, too

Reid says that he doesn't want to fund any part of the government unless it all can be funded. He is, in fact, holding hostage each of these programs that the House, and most of the Senate, believe are in the national interest to fund, so that he can win a partisan political battle.

Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) said: 

House Republicans didn't want it to come to this. We have been ready to negotiate on the budget and the CR. Our conferees are appointed. We have continued to send ideas and information and options over to the Senate, and it has been with great disappointment that we have watched the Senate not take these up.

The President and Senate Majority Leader must negotiate. If anyone is in a position not to negotiate, it is the House, with full Constitutional authority to control, in as much detail as they wish, how the government does and does not spend our money.

Jack Mills

Obama and Reid need to own the shut down because they were refusing to have a discussion; unfortunately, the way the law works is that Congress does decide what to fund and what not to fund. There are thousands of things that are legal and approved, but not funded.

As for their criticism about picking and choosing: Sort of ironic that they say that AFTER Obama gives out loads of exemptions and tweaks the law which is expressly NOT in the scope of the POTUS authority.

stonestone's picture
stone stone

It wasn't the Democrats that shut down the government. The GOP did. Plain and simple. Hence place blame where the blame belongs.