Posted on 02/15/2009 4:54:36 PM PST by Born Conservative
WASHINGTON — For years, Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania has been the National Institutes of Health’s most ardent champion on Capitol Hill. Having survived two bouts with cancer, open-heart surgery and even a faulty diagnosis of Lou Gehrig’s disease, he has long insisted that research that results in medical cures is the best service that government can provide.
Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania arrived Friday at the Capitol to cast a crucial vote on the economic stimulus bill.
But even lobbyists are stunned by the coup Mr. Specter pulled off this week. In return for providing one of only three Republican votes in the Senate for the Obama administration’s $787 billion economic stimulus package, he was able to secure a 34 percent increase in the health agency’s budget — to $39 billion from $29 billion.
After money intended for highways, schools and states, it is the largest of chunk of financing in the budget and is almost three times the $3.5 billion first approved by the House. Nearly $2 billion is intended for building and equipment projects at the N.I.H. campus in Bethesda, Md., as well as at universities across the country. But most of the money will go to pay for as many as 15,000 additional grants submitted by scientists at universities across the country.
The health institutes currently issue 45,000 such grants at an average cost of $360,000 a year. And although most grants are financed for four to five years, administrators said they would give priority to projects that could be completed in two years.
House Republican leaders argued that the health institutes, flooded with cash, would pay for unworthy projects that would create few jobs. But the institutes finance only about 40 percent...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Ping
The traitor sold out his country.
That’s what I say about Specter - fulcrum...
Yes, with NIH we get focused research lead by a few people that think they are the only ones with a good idea. We have probably set back a cure for cancer by years. The best and brightest are following the political researcher’s paths so that they will be funded, NIH grants the route to tenure, instead of making their own discoveries. We would be better off letting the States fund researchers instead of supporting Government projects at NIH and CDC.
Every researcher knows that the best project is one that will be funded by NIH but will never be solved. A career maker.
Government lead research is like everything else the government does.
I will bet as this gets around it won’t be viewed as a coup.
Pay to play, it’s the Obama way.
Screw this Turd!!
Looks like Specter got his 30 pieces of silver. Why am I not surprised.
He sold America into debt bondage it will live to regret just in the hope that he can live forever.
It would seem that if there was in fact and kind and loving God he would has sent the traitor to the grave before he voted to drive a stake through the heart of the country that I love..
So he got 10 billion dollars out of a 787 billion dollar boondoggle. He sold out cheap.
Folks, the money is only fifteen of the silver pieces.
The other fifteen lay in the words of this “journalistic BJ” masquerading as a news piece. Think back to your high school days, and to the poor souls who would do anything to be considered part of the “in-crowd”; or recall the college youth who would accept all manner of humiliation to join just the right fraternity. You now know the juvenile insecurities that motivate full-grown men and women to forsake all else (common sense, principle, honor, loyalty) to bask in the ego-boosting prose of such as the NYT.
Specter must be smoking his post-orgasm cigarette right about now.
Pay to play?
Or is this one Play for the Pay?
Mitch McConnell should remove him from the Judiciary Committee for this act of treason (treason to the party AND to the nation).
He sold out cheap, but look at the implications...
He flushed our country down the toilet for a pet project deal made at a Super Bowl Party. You think our govt. doesn’t need an overhaul? Or is their even enough of an honest govt left to overhaul?
FREE HOT ROD, ARREST SPECTER.....NO DIFFERENCE and that is why Rod is so confident.
And, with any luck at all, it will result in a dose of the political clap.
Mitch McConnell should remove him from the Judiciary Committee for this act of treason (treason to the party AND to the nation).
___________________________________
Bombard him with letters
WHY is it that Democrats can keep Democrats in line but the Republicans can”t ?
This means that the NIH head can get a better company car.
Full of something. If they call it “crum”, it’s crum.
The coup is coming.
“After he goes we need to target the Main sisters, Snowe and Collins. “
Nope. At the same time... 2010.
I don't think that's his 30 pieces. My bet is that he's going to be paid off in some other fashion, quietly, directly or indirectly.
He and Casey have teamed up and someone is running commercials to call and thank them for voting for SCHIP and helping millions of children.
I want to vomit.
join conservativeallies.com and help us get rid of him and other creeps.
And the liberal mentality of this major RINO is laid out for all to see.
Seems to me that national defense might ought to rate somewhat higher... Protection of our God Given rights might also be placed just a bit higher.
There are two out there considering taking him on.
My cousin in Maine says the people want to ‘hang them from the tree of liberty.’
She said, at the normally quiet local watering hole where they go alot, it almost came to fisticuffs about snow, collins, and the stimulus.
Republicans may have HELPED in stay in office, but he is, in effect, a Liberal, and thus, I do not WANT him grooming anyone for his seat. I was hoping that Pat Toomey would run against him the next time, but at this point, it looks as though he’ll run for Governor.
It’s disgusting to think that he sold us out for his own personal gain.
scumbag is too kind a term for the waste of skin and demeans me for using the term
Fisticuffs will only be the opening act.
You betcha!
re: Pulls Off a Coup for Health Money
Maybe not. Let’s not count our chickens before they hatch. He hasn’t gotten any money for anybody yet. All he has is the promise to provide it IF it’s there. And I suspect that’s going to be a bigger and bigger if as we move through this next year.
I can Fedex some rope, if needed. It can be there first thing Wednesday.
What good will a cure for anything be when all of America's tax payers are all destitute?
In an act of extreme selfishness Specter sold out future generations in the hope of squeezing another few years out of his already decaying corpse.
I wish people would stop referring to politicians “as spending like drunken sailors”. I ran out of money most of the time when I was a drunken sailor.
Point taken.
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