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Mary LaskerMary Lasker
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cut on the floor and the administration is supporting it. What are you going to do about it?” “Well,” I said, “I'll do whatever I can.” Isn't that funny?

I did nothing, and there was a cross-the-boards two per cent cut in the House, but I don't think the Senate will go along with it, so we'll see what happens.

You know, this thing never is finished until late in the year. By the time it's finished, nobody has any sense of accomplishment at all. You just begin to think about what's for next year.

Q:

Yes, You have to begin for next year already.

Lasker:

Well, I went one day to lobby the House and the Senate with Eppie Lederer, Ann Landers.

Q:

Was this to go to committee meetings or --?

Lasker:

No, this was to go to visit individual Congressmen and Senators, and she went to visit a lot of Senators alone, that I didn't know particularly well, including Proxmire. Proxmire is extremely recalcitrant and not interested in medical research, but she's a friend of his and is trying to turn him around. She hasn't managed it yet, but she still may. I was amazed that he'd go for nine hundred and twenty-five million for cancer.

She did write an ad that we ran in all the major newspapers in the states that the Senators were from except for Magnuson, and all the districts of the Congressmen on the Sub-committee on Appropriations, urging their readers to write their Congressmen and Senators. Some of them got a big outpouring of mail.





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