Biden praises spending bill for moving toward cure for cancer

Vice President Biden is praising the spending bill that passed Friday for increasing funds for cancer research, as he seeks to “end cancer as we know it.”

The bill includes a $2 billion increase in funding for medical research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), including a $264 million increase for the National Cancer Institute. 

{mosads}It brings the funding for the NIH to $32 billion, a major increase after a decade of mostly flat budgets that failed to keep up with inflation. 

“This agreement marks the largest investment in the NIH in a decade — $32 billion — that will mean more clinical trials for patients and more research grants for next-generation scientists,” Biden said in a statement Friday.

“It will help put us closer to curing cancer — turning deadly diseases into manageable chronic conditions — and on the verge of countless other life-saving and life-changing discoveries.”

In October, while announcing that he would not run for president, Biden pledged to advocate for cancer research during his remaining time as vice president. Biden’s son, Beau, died of brain cancer in May. 

“The things that are just about to happen, we can make them real with an absolute national commitment to end cancer as we know it today,” Biden said. “And I’m going to spend the next 15 months in this office pushing as hard as I can to accomplish this.”

The push to increase NIH funding has been bipartisan. Two Republican spending bills proposed earlier this year both gave substantial increases to NIH as well.