Unfortunately, President Bush vetoed the FY 2008 Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations bill (H.R. 3043) on Tuesday. Thank you to all MS activists for taking action on this important issue.
Now, Congress will attempt to override the president's veto. Take a minute today to call your members of Congress. Encourage them to override the president's veto of H.R. 3043 and support funding for critical health programs, including multiple sclerosis research and respite care. Call the Capitol switchboard at 1-800-828-0498 and ask for your Representative and both Senators.
The president's action against the health and education funding was not surprising, as he had repeatedly vowed to veto the bill. But the result is still disappointing. This bill would have provided a 3.1% increase for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), including MS research, and a 6% increase for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
In addition, Congress had incorporated nearly $4 million in funding in the bill for the development of a comprehensive MS center at West Virginia University in Morgantown, W.Va. And it included $2 million for state respite care grants authorized by the Lifespan Respite Care Act (which MS activists helped pass last year).
Call your legislators today. We will continue to keep you updated on the results of the override attempt.
Thank you for being an MS activist. Join the movement at www.nationalMSsociety.org/advocacy
1 comment:
Thanks for bringing this bill to us activist attention so that we can bring it to their attention. I think it would be better to work towards a compromise though, because I don't think that we should encourage our government to spend 3 times the budgeted amount. As you all know the deficit recently surpassed 9,000,000,000,000 dollars--that is a lot of zeros. We should encourage congress instead to reform the legislation by removing 2000 pork projects and fund real research like the MS research. We all win in this case.
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