May 2, 2017
By Alex Keown, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
WASHINGTON – Despite President Donald Trump’s proposal to cut funding at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) by $1.2 billion, a Congressional budget plan struck to avoid a government shutdown bumps NIH funding by $2 billion over the next five months.
The bipartisan budget plan provided $34.1 billion for the NIH, the largest budget boost it has seen in more than 10 years, The Hill reported Monday. However, that budget bump does not account for 2018, a year that Trump’s budget proposal included a $5 billion cut to the NIH. This is the second year in a row the NIH has been provided a $2 billion budget increase, which could signal support for the 21st Century Cures Act which was signed into law in December by former President Barack Obama, StatNews reported.
The new funding the NIH will receive includes an additional $400 million to research Alzheimer’s disease and an additional $476 million for the National Cancer Institute, Stat reported. Additionally, another Obama initiative, the Precision Medicine Initiative, will see an increase of $120 million to help recruit volunteers for genetic testing and the proposed health tracking plan, Stat said. A program to map the human brain will also see a $110 million boost.
Under the President Trump’s proposal, which was released in March, the NIH would see a reorganization of its 27 institutes and centers. How a reorganization would play out has yet to be determined. The early proposal would also eliminate the Fogarty International Center which has a mission of building partnerships between health research institutions in the United State and globally. Approximately 80 percent of the NIH funding is sent to more than 300,000 researchers at institutions in the United States and across the globe. Because grants span multiple years, cuts the NIH could see under the president’s proposal could prove disruptive to medical research being conducted. Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, a doctor, said the NIH budget could be reduced without hampering research if federal funds included in grants for non-medical-related costs, such as utilities and paying for equipment used in research, were not included in the grants, Stat reported.
The Trump White House is expected to release a full budget proposal for 2018, which could still include cuts for the NIH – cuts that Trump said in March would weed out inefficiencies at the agency, The Atlantic reported. If Trump maintains his vision to cut funding there, will the Republican lawmakers who helmed the funding boost in the omnibus bill, including Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma who chairs the house subcommittee with jurisdiction over NIH funding, continue to fight for NIH funding? When the White House initially released its budget proposal, Cole called the NIH cuts “short-sighted,” The Atlantic said.
