wet begin "washington journal" uprising on present biden's moonshot initiative. we are joined by lauren gardner reporter covering the food and drug administration at politico. lauren gardner good morning to you. you are covering this are covering the speeches are to present say you want to cut the u.s. death toll from cancer in half over the next 25 years. how does he plan to do that? the >> guest: the president yesterday went through a list of the things he has already done as vice president or president obama now as president and the future in terms of what he wants to do to reduce cancer deaths over the next 25 years. yesterday was a way to link his

cancer moonshot which he's been working on since he was vice president and thinking that to president john f. kennedy's historic speech six years ago yesterday about trying to take the u.s. to the moon and strong parallels about how that may seem a far-flung idea what now if we can dedicate the resources and the brainpower to achieve it. one of these big things around that is this new agency. it's the advanced research process for health care and it's modeled on a couple ofs innovative agencies in the federal government one being focused on defense, defense technologies and another beingd energy and that was launched

earlier this year with a billion dollars in funding. the president introduced this new director for that initiative yesterday and use that to show you no the effort and one that they big goals of this new agency is to back up research and accelerate that research into breakthrough technologies and bring them into implementation to target chronic diseaseso that you typically her people are suffering from but that don't have treatments or cures. like alzheimer's disease diabetes and many types of cancer. >> host: arpad age in washington is name of that agency. the lead at that agency the president introducing in the president also signing ann

executive order yesterday to headline that. the white house's launch an effort to -- what is that effort? >> he signed an executive order yesterday to focus federal departments around this idea of doing more to boost domestic biomanufacturing across all sectors and not just health care. while that may be the first thing people think of in terms of pharmaceutical supplies and medicines that more that happens on u.s. shores. there's also ways to use these innovative biotechnologies like climate change impact and sequester carbon and improve food production and use these technologies to try to bring

those manufacturing jobs back to the united states. the executive order hopes to coordinate federal investment with that goal in mind through several different agencies and senior demonstrations officials expect announcements later this week. wednesday there's going to be a summit at the white house on the topic of climatology and biomanufacturing and which it sounds like they are going to make announcements about roles for directing resources to -- towards those. is that you cover the food and drug administration for politico. what role does the app d.a. have inis this moonshot initiative? guest: onene thing the president talked about yesterday was this law that passed in the waning days of the obama administration called the 21st century -- and one of the goals of that was

some of the processes by the fda to review some of these innovative drugs and treatments that manufactures develop to try to target diseases and it was a bipartisan effort and it's pretty popular on capitol hill. right now there is a dig debate overextending, not extending. re-upping the program that is used to fund these activities at the va which is derived in part by the industry to get the fda to review some of these applications. that is december 30 and much like everything on capitol hill there's an effort to get that

over the finishca line. that's a key part of making sure the fda has the resources in place to do these reviews and there's a separate effort into how to build back the 21st century cures to give the agencies more authority to focus on innovations like that. that remains to be seen whether that will have the legs to make it across the finish line by the end of the calendar year. those are the discussions going on capitol hill both by the food and drug administration and innovations like yours. as for politico.com is where you can go to see lauren gardner's work food and drug administration worker there and her story from yesterday. appreciate you getting up with us this morning and appreciate your time. >> thank