House Defies Bush on Stem Cells

Posted on May 25, 2005

In a somewhat surprising turn of events, the House of Representatives voted to approve a bill which would loosen current restriction on using federal funds for embryonic stem cell research.

The vote, 238 to 194 with 50 Republicans in favor, fell far short of the two-thirds majority required to overturn a presidential veto, setting up a possible showdown between Congress and Mr. Bush, who has never exercised his veto power. An identical bill has broad bipartisan support in the Senate; moments after the House vote, the Senate sponsors wrote to the Republican leader, Bill Frist, urging him to put it on the agenda.
The House action is the first vote on embryonic stem cell research since August 2001, when Mr. Bush opened the door to taxpayer financing for the studies, but only with strict limits. The new bill permits the government to pay for studies involving human embryos that are in frozen storage at fertility clinics, so long as couples conceiving the embryos certified that they had made a decision to discard them.

This is far from becoming law. But it's the first major indication that the sensible side of the Republican party is waking up and realizing that James Dobson and his ilk are slowly killing off scientific progress. Stem cell research is popular, especially to any American who knows someone who suffers from diabetes, Alzheimer's, nerve degeneration or other other medical conditions which could benefit from the research. Will Bush really veto such popular legislation? That will be interesting to see.