Texas Cancer program & Proposition 15 - Not Needed

This is the total National Cancer Institute's Budget request for FY2008: $5,799,225 This budget is just one part of the huge budget of $30 billion for the National Institute for Health. Such huge Federal spending begs a simple question about state-level spending proposals: Why add more to it?

In a single year, the Federal Government will increase spending on cancer by $800 million, and spend more on cancer in one year than proposition 15 will spend in 10 years. It is a myth to suggest, as advocates have, that cancer spending is 'stagnant'; it's been growing. It's a myth too that the Texas incremental funding will change the pace of discovery and innovation in cancer research in any significant way. An incremental funding level of less than 5% of public and private research funding will only help in incremental way. This is not about curing cancer or not. This is about whether to saddle taxpayers at the state-level with state-directed research funding in a targetted area; and furthermore, about whether we should fund it with bonds and an endowment as opposed to other appropriations methods. Both aspects of this proposal are questionable.

Cancer is a worthwhile topic for research, but consider the bang for the buck factor: With the National Cancer Institute, over $5 billion a year is allocated and the cost to Texas taxpayers would equate (assuming Texas has 7% of Federal tax load) to about the $300 million commitment of proposition 15. Spending federal money gives a return on Texas cancer investment dollars 15 times greater than at state-level, since we are sharing the load across the U.S. If the goal is to accelerate curing cancer, incremental Federal funding would be a more equitable way to go. If the goal on the other hand is to keep research in Texas, one might well ask why not take a good slice of the $5 billion NCI funding instead. Prop 15 will cost a lot and deliver much less than what we get out of spending at NCI.

Furthermore, it is less likely that state-directed funding would focus on the best competitive research. Would a newly created state-level agency have the experience and expertise in targetting research as well as the NCI? No. The plan must be to keep the research in Texas, but would throwing money at a research center make it best-in-class? It should help upgrade research centers, but there is no guarantee this would happen.

Any problems over poor research would be limited if the $3 billion were appropriated yearly and subject to legislative oversight. But alas, that is the fatal flaw in this idea - it won't be. The funding will be on autopilot for 10 years. We are inviting a future scandal where we find out that the money was was mis-spent on inferior research. Once the votes say "aye", we are locked into a $3 billion 10-years commitment, even if the funding agency doesn't perform, even if the research opportunities to fund aren't up to par, even if we have buyer's remorse about focussing on cancer as opposed to other opportunities, even if the fiscal situation goes bad and we need to reprioritize state budgets.

These issues are compounded with the error of funding this program via bonds, which will add to costs via interest payments. So, instead of ongoing appropriations, we have an inflexible pig-in-a-poke that will lack the ability of oversight needed to keep the program efficient. For all these reasons - the excellent and well-funded Federal programs, the lack of accountability and oversight built into the proposal, and the inherent weakness in state-level directed research funding - the proposition 15 should be opposed. And it should be noted, whichever way the vote goes, it won't do anything to change our progress against cancer.

Sorry Lance, proposition 15 is not needed.