Ever watch a nine-year-old testify before Congress? 

If you want some serious cuteness — and a dose of serious policy, too — may I suggest you tune into Wednesday’s Senate Aging Committee hearing on the Special Diabetes Program? Nine-year-old Ruby Anderson and 16-year-old Adriana Richard will testify on the importance of reauthorizing the program, which provides $150 million annually for NIH research searching for a cure to Type 1 diabetes. They’re coming to Washington as part of a fly-in from the juvenile research advocacy group JDRF, which will bring more than 160 children to Washington to urge reauthorization of the program before it expires at the end of September. 

If you’re thinking: ‘Reauthorizing this should be a no-brainer, right?’ then perhaps you’ve forgotten that we’re talking here about the U.S. Congress. In fact, the last time the program was up for reauthorization — back in 2017 — funding lapsed for more than four months. Now, advocates are pushing for longer-term funding of the program. And it’s increasingly looking likely they’ll succeed. 

The health care package cleared out of the Senate HELP Committee late last month included a four-year reauthorization of the program. On the House side, Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.) has introduced legislation that would also fund the program until 2024. That bill would simultaneously increase annual funding for the program from $150 million to $200 million.