New U.S. congress, new stem cell bills

U.S. lawmakers plan to use the first hours of the new 110th Congress, convening today (January 4), to assemble legislation to extend Federal research funding to newly derived stem cell lines. President George Bush vetoed the measure in July 2006 after it had passed the Senate and House with wide bipartisan support. The House failed to muster the necessary two-thirds votes to override the veto, a hurdle supporters hope to surmount this year. While details were still being worked out last night, the plan as of press time is for bill sponsors Reps. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.) and Mike Castle (R-Del.) to reintroduce an identical version of their "Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act of 2005" in the House tomorrow (Jan. 5), and for Senators Thomas Harkin (D-Iowa) and Arlen Specter (R-Penn.) to submit the identical measure as early as today. The bills will be numbered HR 3 and S 5, respectively."Human embryonic stem cells will be one of the main priorities right out of the gate," said Jon Retzlaff, legislative affairs director for the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB). "One of the main objectives is to get the DeGette-Castle bill passed in both the Senate and House, and we could be seeing that by next week," he told The Scientist. As currently planned, HR 3 will go to the floor of the House for a vote on Jan. 11, bypassing committee hearings "because it was truly a bipartisan bill" when it passed last year, said Brandon MacGillis, spokesman for DeGette. But S 5 will likely be the topic of hearings in the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor & Pensions (HELP), said Harkin spokesperson Maureen Knightly. The intention there is to add amendments that would make the measure more attractive to senators and difficult for Bush to veto. "This is one of our top agenda items," Knightly told The Scientist. "We think there is a good chance to over-ride any veto on the Senate side." The president is widely expected to veto the measure again on moral grounds. Last year's veto -- Bush's first and only -- was met with disappointment and frustration by legislators and biomedical research advocates.As was the case last year, finding the two-thirds votes in both legislative chambers to override a veto will not be easy. "It will be very difficult to get the numbers," Retzlaff said. "It's very close right now." Neither Retzlaff nor the congressional staffers were willing to discuss the vote-count at this time. In the House, 290 votes are needed to override the veto if all members vote (last year the override failed by 51 votes), while 67 are needed in the Senate (where only 63 supported the bill last year). Nearly all of the 41 incoming House Democrats support the measure, DeGette told the Denver Post last month. But many of these freshmen replaced Republicans who had also supported the measure. The Senate picked up at least three more votes, bringing that body within one vote of the override. This year, bill sponsors have assembled an eight-member team of lawmakers -- evenly split between Democrats and Republicans -- to lobby colleagues, MacGillis said. The measure would make Federal research funding available for human embryonic stem cell lines derived after Aug. 9, 2001, the existing cutoff date. DeGette, Castle, Harkin, and Specter plan to outline their strategy for enacting the stem cell measure during a press briefing next Tuesday (Jan. 9), MacGillis said. Ted Agres tagres@the-scientist.com Links within this articleR. Gallagher, "Just One Vote," The Scientist, December 2006. https://www.thescientist.com/article/display/36654"Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act of 2005" (HR 810) https://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c109:h.r.810:T Agres, "U.S. Senate approves stem cell bills," The Scientist, July 19, 2006 https://www.thescientist.com/news/display/23983T Agres, "Stem cell supporters upset by Bush veto," The Scientist, July 20, 2006 https://www.the-scientist.com/news/display/23995A. Mulkern, "Dems on the rise for stem cells," Denver Post, Dec. 8, 2006. https://www.denverpost.com/ci_4799821T Agres, "Stepping up for stem cells," The Scientist, September 3, 2001 https://www.thescientist.com/article/display/12572

New U.S. congress, new stem cell bills

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