If you were following along this week's Continuing Resolution (CR) drama, and God bless you if you were, then you might have heard a lot of talk about the "pediatric cancer bill" being stripped from the legislation by Elon Musk and the evil Republicans, who wanted to pass a "clean" CR.
Conversely, you might have heard Republicans berate Senate Democrats, and Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) in particular, for sitting many months on a standalone bill that the House passed back in March.
One thing's for sure, and that's that the bill, formally called the Gabriella Miller Kids First Research Act 2.0, was used as a political football between the two warring parties in order to shift blame over the CR disaster.
The truth, as is almost always the case, was somewhere in between.
The original version of the act was signed into law by Barack Obama back in 2013, one year after the death of 10-year-old Gabriella Miller from glioblastoma, and was funded through fiscal year 2023. The Republican-controlled House of Representatives passed the 2.0 act on March 5, 2024, and the bill was then sent to the Democrat-controlled Senate, where it languished for rest of the year.
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The 2.0 act was temporarily attached to the CR in order to get it passed in the Senate, but it was dropped when Musk and President-elect Donald Trump pushed for, and got, a cleaner version of the bill. But, that didn't mean the Gabriella Miller bill was dead, as it was still a standalone bill in the Senate.
As it turns out, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) was the one person standing in the way of the bill's passage.
Kaine said Rand Paul dropped his objection to passing the Gabriella Miller Kids First Research Act 2.0 after he committed to make sure there's "no overlapping programs where we're spending money to do the same thing"
— Igor Bobic (@igorbobic) December 21, 2024
The Senate version of the bill included additional $$, which…
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The Senate version of the bill included additional $$, which is what led to the dispute, but Dems ultimately settled for House bill
Once Sen. Paul dropped his objection, the Gabriella Miller Kids First Research Act 2.0 passed unanimously and, once signed by President Biden, will fund the pediatric cancer research initiative at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) through 2028.
Now that we've got the politics bit out of the way, I wanted to share with you the story of Gabriella Miller, a little girl from my hometown of Leesburg, Virginia, who accomplished quite a bit in her all-too-short time here on earth.
When Gabriella was first diagnosed with glioblastoma, a malignant, aggressive and, in Gabriella's case, inoperable, brain tumor, in 2012, her mother, Ellyn, took to local Facebook group in search of support and help. She shared quite a bit about her special little girl, including the fact that she loved numbers and dreamed of going to college.
The Miller family started an initiative called Smashing Walnuts, so named because when told her tumor was the size of a walnut, Gabriella said she was going to smash it to bits. At public events held in support of Gabriella, the Miller family would bring along a skillet and walnuts, and participants would take turns smashing the walnuts to smithereens.
Shortly after being diagnosed, Gabriella was gifted a trip to Paris by the Make a Wish Foundation, but wanted to do something to help other children struggling with health issues.
She asked for letters to Santa, because Macy's donates a dollar back to Make A Wish for every letter received. Gabriella figured other children struggling just like her deserve their dream.
Well, they blew past their goal of 10,000 letters. Social media made 50,000 a reality.
Then, all expectations were shattered. 100,000 became 150,000, which morphed into more than 200,000 letters.
As Gabriella got sicker and the inevitable grew nearer, she decided she wanted to fulfill one of her life's wishes: to graduate from college. Shenandoah University in Winchester, Virginia, made that happen. In one short day on campus, Gabriella attended class, sang with the choir and got her diploma, all while very visibly struggling with her disease.
This just scratches the surface of the little girl who captured the hearts of a community, and whose legacy now could help countless others smash their own cancerous walnuts. After Gabriella's death in October of 2013, her mother, Ellyn Miller, became a crusader.
Despite the political sniping between the parties this week, the Gabriella Miller Kids First Research Act got this far due its support over the years from both sides of the aisle. Former Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) and Senators Tim Kaine and Mark Warner, both Democrats from Virginia, and former Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) were the original champions of the legislation a decade ago.
Following passage in the Senate on Friday, Ellyn Miller appeared CNN and said she felt “elation, for not just for myself and my family, and in honor of my daughter, but for the entire childhood cancer world. This means so much to all of us.”
