Gov. Baker: Trumps Travel Ban, Budget "Bad For Massachusetts"
Gov. Charlie Baker called several elements of President Donald Trump’s federal budget proposal “alarming,” particularly cuts to the National Institutes of Health or NIH. “It’s not just bad for Massachusetts,” Baker said in an interview with Boston Public Radio Thursday. “It’s bad for the country.”
Trump’s proposed $1.15 trillion federal budget would reduce funding for several domestic programs including $5.8 billion from the National Institutes of Health, the $32 billion national medical research agency.
“The National Institutes of Health ... is the sort of key driver to all sorts of discovery and has a lot to do with laying the foundation for a lot of the basic research that translates and has translated over the course of many decades into some of the most important advancements in medicine and science and biology and chemistry,” Baker said. “It is a fundamental element of what makes this country special.”
Baker said he plans to reach out to the Republican congressional delegation and other governors who rely heavily on NIH funding, as Massachusetts does. “There’s a lot of things in this that concern me,” Baker said. “That’s why it’s going to be important for us to reach out and coordinate our activities on the advocacy side with our delegation and with other governors that find themselves in similar situations.”
Read more: http://news.wgbh.org/2017/03/16/local-news/gov-baker-trumps-travel-ban-budget-bad-massachusetts
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