The White House signaled Tuesday evening that it will support a $6.8 billion medical research package despite concerns about how it will be funded.
The Obama administration released a statement saying it supports the 21st Century Cures Act, which will provide about $6.8 billion in new medical research funding and speed up approval of new drugs and devices. The package also includes $1 billion in grants for fighting opioid abuse.
The House is scheduled to vote Wednesday to add mental health reform provisions to the package, which then will go to the Senate.
The bill includes funding for President Obama’s medical research initiatives, including $1.8 billion for the cancer moonshot, which seeks to conduct 10 years worth of cancer research in five. It also includes $1.4 billion for the National Institutes of Health’s Precision Medicine Initiative.
“The administration is committed to taking immediate action to lay the groundwork to ensure that the funds in the bill would be disbursed quickly and effectively so we can begin to address these important public health challenges,” the statement said.
However, the White House had concerns with how the legislation is funded. It plans to sell 25 million barrels of crude oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which holds about 700 million barrels.
The requirement to sell barrels “continues a bad precedent of selling off longer term energy security assets to satisfy near term budget scoring needs,” the White House said.
However, the White House noted that the “advances in health” far outweigh those concerns.
