President Joe Biden is not yet appealing to Congress to appropriate more money for cancer research, detection, prevention, and treatment as he provides an update on his own moonshot’s progress, according to the White House.
“I don’t have any additional appropriations asks from the administration for the cancer moonshot,” press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Monday. “When we do, we’ll be sure to share that.”
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Jean-Pierre briefed reporters aboard Air Force One en route to Boston for Biden’s speech. The remarks will also commemorate the 60th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s moonshot address.
“As part of today’s trip, the president announced new actions that will accelerate our cancer moonshot efforts, including appointing Dr. Renee Wegrzyn as the inaugural director of ARPA-H, a new agency with the sole mission of delivering innovations that will improve the health of Americans,” Jean-Pierre said.
“President Biden this morning signed an executive order that establishes a new biotech and manufacturing initiative that will help ensure cutting-edge biotechnology necessary to solve our nation’s critical challenges are developed and manufactured in America,” she added.
In February 2021, Biden rebooted the cancer moonshot he originally started as vice president. Congress appropriated $1.8 billion over seven years for the project in 2016, the final year of President Barack Obama’s administration. The renewed moonshot aims to reduce the age-adjusted cancer death rate by at least 50% over the next 25 years, such as by encouraging screenings that many people skipped during the pandemic.
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Biden, whose eldest son Beau died of brain cancer in 2015 at the age of 46, promised in 2019 to cure cancer if he won the 2020 election.
