WASHINGTON -- Sen. Tom Coburn will continue to block consideration of a breast cancer research bill, despite broad bipartisan support for the legislation.
"I'm not lifting my hold on that bill," Coburn said last week. "I'm not going to fold on this. It's not good science; it's not good policy."
Coburn, R-Muskogee, has for two months single-handedly blocked sure Senate passage of a bill that would authorize research into environmental factors that may cause breast cancer.
Sponsors had hoped to clear the legislation by unanimous consent, an expedited way of passing bills that are relatively non-controversial.
Using rules that give every senator the right to block consideration of a piece of legislation or a nomination, Coburn has placed holds on other bills that he finds objectionable.
The breast cancer research bill has 66 co-sponsors -- giving it support of two-thirds of the Senate -- including liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans. Similar legislation has bipartisan support in the House, and more than half the House is supporting it.
Fran Visco, president of the National Breast Cancer Coalition, the group that conceived of and pushed for the bill, said last week there may not be enough time for lawmakers to consider the legislation through the normal process, which allows for amendments and debate.
Congress is expected to return after the Nov. 7 elections for a brief lame-duck session, but the agenda may be limited to the budget work that lawmakers failed to finish before leaving town to campaign.
"It would be so much better if he just lifted his hold," Visco said. "He doesn't need to agree with us. We just want the bill to go to the floor. He can vote against it."
The legislation would mean $180 million over six years to conduct studies on what environmental factors -- whether it's air, water, food or lifestyle -- may increase the risk of breast cancer.
"The research is needed because we don't know how to prevent breast cancer," Visco said. "We don't know how to reduce the risk of breast cancer."
Visco said she and her grassroots group did a lot of analysis and met with researchers and cancer experts, and consulted with the National Institutes of Health before developing legislation six years ago.
There had been isolated studies that looked at a very specific environmental risk, she said, but nothing that approached the topic in "an overarching way."
Ongoing breast cancer research
Dan Ralbovsky, spokesman for the National Institutes of Health, said the agency "is committed to breast cancer research as well as to understanding the role that the environment plays in risk for all diseases."
"Currently known breast cancer risk factors explain less than half of the more than 200,000 new cases of invasive breast cancer diagnosed each year. More research is needed. No one study alone can provide a definitive answer, so we need to support a wide variety of quality studies to get a better understanding of the basis for the disease."
Ralbovsky said the NIH is supporting some studies that seek environmental and genetic causes for breast cancer.
"The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, for example, supports studies like the Sister Study, one of the nation's largest research efforts to find the environmental causes of breast cancer," he said.
Coburn said the research called for in the breast cancer bill he is blocking already is being conducted. He said about $600 million a year is being spent on breast cancer research, and the National Institutes of Health is spending $100 million.
"This is politics driving research instead of peer-reviewed science driving research," he said.
Coburn, a physician, said he is not opposed to breast cancer research and that two of his closest relatives -- his sister and sister-in-law -- had breast cancer. But he said there are other types of cancer that would benefit from more research dollars as well.
Visco said, "Our mission is to end breast cancer. We have no interest in duplicating what (research) exists. This is our life and our world. It is not Senator Coburn's world. We did our homework. He has many, many things on his plate. Our plate is breast cancer."
Visco called the situation "an unfortunate civics lesson."
"We did everything right" in developing the legislation and seeking a wide cross-section of support, she said.
"We're not giving up," she said.
Coburn's criteria
Besides the breast cancer research legislation, Coburn is blocking potentially quick approval of other bills, including one that would renew a Justice Department grant program to prevent homelessness among people released from prisons and jails.
He also has blocked a bill that would have allotted $50 million in Department of Agriculture grants for local food banks across the country to coordinate their activities and improve their operations.
Coburn said he considers three factors before blocking a bill: whether the money spent is offset in some way rather than adding to the deficit; whether the proposal duplicates something already being done in the federal government; and whether the proposal represents a proper role for the federal government.
An aide to Coburn said the food bank bill would have added another level of bureaucracy and told food banks "how to be more local."
In regard to the bill to prevent homelessness among former inmates, Coburn said, "Why is that a federal responsibility? Where's the money going to come from?"
Coburn said he does not put "secret" holds on bills -- a process attacked by Internet bloggers when some senators did that on his bill to establish an Internet database of government spending on grants and contracts.
He said he always calls up the senator who is sponsoring legislation that is objectionable to him and tells him or her that he's blocking it.
Coburn said he currently is blocking six or seven bills. He said it doesn't matter to him if they call for spending amounts that are minuscule in the overall budget picture.
"If it was $10, I'd be doing the same thing," he said. "It's the principle."
