Every day in this country, there is a silent killer among us. It's more deadly than breast cancer and AIDS combined. Unless we join together and continue to fund our nation's effort to stop this epidemic, we will be unable to stop it.

Nearly 26 million Americans are living with diabetes, and an additional 79 million have prediabetes and are at high risk for developing this terrible disease. Diabetes is serious, costly and deadly - and a threat to our nation's health care system and economy. One out of every five health care dollars is spent caring for someone with diagnosed diabetes, while one in ten health care dollars is attributed to diabetes. The national price tag for diabetes-related costs, including undiagnosed diabetes, prediabetes and gestational diabetes is a shocking $218 billion per year. Costly complications such as amputations, blindness and kidney disease will continue to grow unless we fund diabetes programs aimed at finding a cure and preventing needless tragedies.

Given this magnitude, our nation can no longer afford to ignore the facts. Congress must join us by supporting critical investments in diabetes research and prevention in fiscal year 2012 and providing the highest possible funding for the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases. In addition, Congress needs to support diabetes prevention activities at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Division of Diabetes Translation and provide funding from the Prevention and Public Health Fund to scale up the proven, community-based National Diabetes Prevention Program. These programs produce incredible returns on investment: saving lives, improving the future for people with diabetes and moving us closer to finding a cure.

Here in Texas, 1.7 million people are living with diabetes and another 450,000 people are believed to have undiagnosed diabetes, bringing the total to 2.1 million people. We understand the devastation and why now more than ever, funding for diabetes programs is crucial. And it's not just federal diabetes programs that are in trouble. The budget for diabetes programs at the Texas Department of State Health Services is in serious jeopardy. These are all crucial programs that have been proven to work, and they should not be cut. We know it is a difficult time of budget constraints, and we support fiscal responsibility; yet the fiscally responsible thing to do is to prevent future costly complications that will ultimately cost billions of dollars.

Every complication is a tragedy. When a person loses the ability to see, it is a tragedy. When a child is diagnosed with diabetes, it is a tragedy. We owe it to our children to find a cure, so we can one day prevent all the tragedies we call complications. Potential funding cuts threaten the successes we have already made in research and public health initiatives that have resulted in better treatments and prevention methods. We are making progress; this is not the time to take a step backward.

According to the CDC, one in three children born in the year 2000 will develop diabetes during their lifetime. To prevent this scary statistic from becoming a deadly reality, Congress must provide the highest possible overall funding for federal diabetes programs and the Texas Legislature must resist the temptation to cut diabetes funding. Together, we must stop diabetes.

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Griffin is the chair of the National Board of Directors of the American Diabetes Association and resides in Victoria. Gonzalez, of McAllen, serves as the chair of the Texas Diabetes Council.