Illinois Delegation Introduces New Versions of American Cures and American Innovation Acts

Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL), and Representatives Bill Foster (D-IL) and Lauren Underwood (D-IL) recently re-introduced the American Cures Act and the American Innovation Act, each of which provide funding authorizations for federal agencies engaged in research and development activities.

The American Cures Act is a reauthorization of the 21st Century Cures Act, first introduced in 2016. The legislation sought to speed up the development of new medical devices and bring these innovations to market more expediently. The new bill would provide an annual budget increase of five percent plus inflation to the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Department of Defense Health Program, and the Veterans Medical and Prosthetics Research Program.

The American Innovation Act, which builds off of the legacy of the 2007 America COMPETES Act, provides a set of directives for R&D activities and support for basic research funding. The new bill would provide an annual budget increase of five percent for research at the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy Office of Science, the Department of Defense Science and Technology Programs, the National Institute of Standards and Technology Scientific and Technical Research, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Science Directorate. This goal of these budget increases is to allow agencies to plan and manage strategic growth while maximizing efficiencies.

“The American Cures and Innovation Acts will allow America’s smartest scientists and researchers to spend less time figuring out how to cut their budgets and more time finding new ways to produce clean energy and clean water, as well as develop news cures and treatments for Alzheimer’s, cancer, and heart disease.” said Durbin. “In the last two centuries, U.S. government support for scientific research has helped split the atom, put a man on the moon, create the Internet, and map the human genome. Today we face new hurdles, but continuing to support sci