Statement of Senator Patrick Leahy on

Funding Breast Cancer Research

September 30, 1992

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Mr. President, I hope other Senators listened carefully to what the Senator from Iowa just said. The Senator from Iowa has raised a point, very important to this body. It is very important to the way we do things here. But it is of even greater importance to the women who serve in our Armed Forces.

In effect, Dick Darman on behalf of the President has chosen to score breast cancer funding as domestic spending in the Defense appropriations bill. In effect, Mr. Darman is wielding his line-item veto.

We hear these great speeches about the need for a line-item veto. I happen to oppose the idea for just this reason. This is not the first time Mr. Darnan has given himself an effective line-item veto. He did this on dairy legislation earlier. He opposed one aspect of it, and effectively killed the chances for family dairy farms to get the help they needed. Now he has done it on breast cancer research funding in the Defense appropriations bill.

Mr. Darman's threat of a line-item veto on this seems to be causing enormous consternation and could well kill the money needed for breast cancer funding. If it were simply the use of a power that unfortunately has been given to the executive branch, that would be one thing. But it is far more than that. It is saying, really, that breast cancer research funding does not make any sense to the administration. I say this because there is a double standard here. There is over $400 million in medical research in the same bill, including $2 million for prostate cancer. Mr. Darman found nothing wrong with that. That does not come under the line of domestic spending; breast cancer does. If one is domestic spending, so is the other. But, yet, prostate cancer funding does not get scored; breast cancer funding does.

So I thought about this for a while and I looked back through the legislative history and I wondered what makes the difference? Why, when they are scoring similar type funding, both in the same bill, one is subjected to the OMB line-item veto but the other is not?

Mr. President, I think the answer is painfully obvious. Men get prostate cancer; predominantlywomengetbreastcancer. The funding for the cancer research in the defense bill that will apply to men is OK. The funding for the cancer research that will apply to women is not OK. It is that simple.

Perhaps if some people who were making this decision ran a risk of getting breast cancer instead of prostate cancer, we would find a reverse in OMB's ideas. Mr. Darman, the generals who are working on the defense bill--all of them face the risk of prostate cancer. In all likelihood none of them faces the risk of breast cancer. The money is in there for prostate cancer. It is not in there for breast cancer. I think this little game is shameful. This little game is shameful and it reflects an arrogant sexism on the part of OMB; an arrogant, a cruel, a mean sexism.

It ignores the realities of today. Let us call it what it is. When they are going to use their line-item veto in effect to say breast cancer funding is bad and prostate cancer funding is OK--come on. There is not a single person in this Chamber who does not know exactly what is going on.

Personally, I feel the funding should be there for both. Cancer that kills, cancer that can be prevented but instead kills men and women in this country--we ought to be doing every- thing to stop it. This is where the priorities of this Nation should be: helping to cure disease; helping especially to prevent diseases that do kill but that can be prevented in time.

I hope this Nation, and this Senate, and certainly I would hope the Office of Management and Budget and the White House will get beyond the day when we look only to those diseases that affect men and ignore those diseases that affect women. It is wrong when we do otherwise. It is wrong, it is arrogant, it is mean.

I know it is an election season and I know we are only a few weeks from congressional and Presidential elections. But this is not a situation in which Republicans get diseases and Democrats do not, or vice versa. The fact is men are at risk for prostate cancer; women predominantly--and some men--are at risk for breast cancer.

Let us not play a game and say we will fund prostate cancer but not breast cancer.

As I said, maybe the people who made these decisions worry more about getting prostate cancer than breast cancer, but I know millions of women in this country worry about the other, and justifiably so.

In my part of this Nation, the Northeast, we have a dispro- portionately high percentage of women who die from breast cancer. 1, for one, do not support the action of OMB. I think it is wrongheaded, sexist, and mean. Maybe they like to be able to wield the veto. Find it on something else, not on this.