Rep. Maxine Waters (CA-43), ranking member of the Financial Services Committee and co-chair of the bipartisan Congressional Task Force on Alzheimer’s Disease, sent a letter to Mary Anne Penner, director of stamp services at the U.S. Postal Service (USPS), urging USPS to issue and sell an Alzheimer’s Research Semipostal Stamp as the inaugural semipostal stamp under the USPS discretionary Semipostal Stamp Program. The letter was dated July 1, 2016, and signed by a bipartisan group of 41 Mmembers of Congress, including Rep. Waters; Rep. Christopher H. Smith (R-NJ), Co-Chair of the Congressional Task Force on Alzheimer’s Disease; and Rep. John Garamendi (D-CA), member of the Congressional Task Force on Alzheimer’s Disease.
“An Alzheimer’s Research Semipostal Stamp will provide an excellent opportunity to raise funds for cutting-edge Alzheimer’s research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH),” stated Waters and her colleagues in their letter. “A semipostal stamp will simultaneously raise public awareness about Alzheimer’s disease and encourage concerned individuals to get involved and make voluntary contributions to Alzheimer’s research efforts.”
The Breast Cancer Research Semipostal Stamp, which was established by an act of Congress, has raised more than $80 million for breast cancer research. USPS recently established a discretionary Semipostal Stamp Program, under which it will issue a total of five additional semipostal stamps over the next 10 years, with each stamp being issued and sold for a two-year period.
