AAAS R&D Funding Update June 2, 2000 -

House Adds $1 Billion to NIH Budget,
Falls Short of Doubling Goal

Go to: Table 1. FY 2001 NIH R&D in House Appropriations Committee Action Table 2. FY 2001 HHS R&D in House Appropriations Committee Action PDF version of this document Related sites: AAAS R&D Funding Update May 15: "Senate Adds $2.7 Billion to NIH Budget For $20.5 Billion Total," Senate Appropriations for NIH R&D AAAS Report XXV: Research and Development FY 2001 (President's Request for FY 2001) Chapter 10: National Institutes of Health in the FY 2001 Budget -Kei Koizumi, AAAS

(This analysis is part of a series of AAAS R&D Funding Updates on the FY 2001 congressional appropriations process. This analysis includes information on R&D in House appropriations for NIH. The complete series of AAAS R&D Funding Updates, including continually updated analyses of R&D by agency in FY 2001 appropriations, is available on the AAAS R&D Web Site (http://www.aaas.org/spp/R&D) in the "FY 2001 R&D" or the "What's New" sections.) Before leaving for a one-week Memorial Day recess, the House Appropriations Committee approved an FY 2001 Labor-HHS appropriations bill providing funding for the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education. The House bill, which follows a companion Senate bill introduced earlier, demonstrates congressional support for biomedical research by providing $18.8 billion in FY 2001 for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the same as the President's request and an increase of $1.0 billion or 5.6 percent over FY 2000 (see Table 1). The House, however, in an unusual move, states its strong desire to appropriate even more for NIH for a total of $20.5 billion, the same as the Senate appropriation, and even allocates the extra funds among the institutes in the bill language. But although the bill distributes $20.5 billion among the NIH institutes, the House also inserted a separate provision that would take back $1.7 billion because of a tight funding situation for the overall bill, leaving the net appropriation at $18.8 billion. The Senate bill would provide the full $20.5 billion without restrictions (see the May 15 AAAS R&D Funding Update for full details of the Senate bill). President Clinton has issued veto threats against both the House and Senate versions of the bill because they fail to meet his budget requests for education and social services programs. While the Senate appropriation would keep NIH on track to double its budget between FY 1998 and FY 2003, the House tried but was unable to match the Senate. When drafting the Labor-HHS bill, the House was faced with a far more restrictive spending total than the Senate and was thus forced to abandon its hope of giving NIH a 15 percent increase, but drew up plans for how to distribute the increase anyway and wrote each institute's appropriation assuming a large increase. The planned distribution of funds would have been similar to the Senate distribution (see Table 1), with increases greater than 14 percent for each institute. But near the back of the bill the House added a provision taking back $1.7 billion of the proposed $2.7 billion boost over the FY 2000 funding level because the funds were needed for other programs, leaving NIH with $18.8 billion, an increase of $1 billion or 5.6 percent that matches the President's request. The $1 billion or 5.6 percent increase for the agency would be well below the nearly 15 percent increases of the past two years. Many Members of Congress are committed to doubling the NIH budget in five years, with FY 2001 as the third year in an effort that began with large increases in FY 1999 and FY 2000. Keeping NIH on a five-year doubling track would require a 15 percent increase to $20.5 billion, a target the Senate bill meets but the House bill falls short of because of the extra provision. NIH classifies 96 percent of its budget as R&D; the remainder is for research training and overhead costs. The House bill would provide $18.1 billion for NIH R&D, up $1.0 billion or 5.8 percent from the FY 2000 total. Every institute would receive an increase greater than 14 percent in the Senate bill and in the House bill as originally written, but after taking back $1.7 billion most would receive increases between 5 and 6 percent. Only the Fogarty International Center (FIC; $48 million, up 10.8 percent) and the Office of the Director (OD; $309 million, up 9.6 percent) would receive increases approaching 10 percent (see Table 1). The National Cancer Institute (NCI) would once again have the largest budget with $3.5 billion, an increase of 5.8 percent, although the House planned to award $3.8 billion (an increase of 15 percent). As with the Senate bill, the House bill would appropriate HIV/AIDS research funds within individual institute budgets, instead of in a consolidated account as the Administration proposed. The House and Senate bills would grant the $149 million request for Buildings and Facilities, which would allow construction to begin on NIH's proposed National Neuroscience Research Center ($47 million in FY 2001). The Administration also requested $26 million in FY 2002 funds for the center, but neither bill includes an advance appropriation. In addition to these intramural construction funds, the House and Senate bills would provide $75 million in the National Center for Research Resources (NCRR) budget to support extramural research facilities construction, slightly above $73 million in FY 2000. The Senate NCRR appropriation would also provide $60 million (up from $40 million) for the Institutional Development Award (IDeA) program designed to broaden the geographic distribution of NIH grants by enhancing the research competitiveness of institutions which have traditionally been less successful in obtaining NIH funding. IDeA is similar to the Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) programs run by the National Science Foundation and other agencies. The House would provide $100 million for this program, but only if the full $20.5 billion NIH appropriation becomes available. Although NIH has come under increasing congressional scrutiny over the past year because of several controversies in areas such as gene therapy research, stem cell research, and the use of fetal tissue, the House and Senate Labor-HHS bills are relatively free of legislative provisions to restrict the types of research NIH can fund. The only major provision is the restatement of an existing ban on NIH using its funds to create human embryos for research purposes or to fund any research in which human embryos are destroyed. The Labor-HHS bill would provide increases for R&D programs in other agencies within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS; see Table 2). R&D in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would increase by 7.1 percent to $511 million. R&D in the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) would increase dramatically to $183 million (up 8.8 percent), with a special emphasis on research on medical errors reduction. Total HHS R&D would rise 5.6 percent to $19.1 billion. Because the House Labor-HHS bill provides details of how the House would allocate $20.5 billion to NIH if it had the money, and because this plan is similar to the Senate's $20.5 billion appropriation, it is nearly certain that in House-Senate conference the NIH budget will end up at $20.5 billion. The difficulty will lie in getting to a final Labor-HHS bill. In most of the past several years, this bill has been the most difficult of the appropriations bills to write and approve, and appropriators have been unable to enact it into law as a stand-alone bill, instead bundling it into a year-end omnibus bill. While this year's process has been unusually rapid compared to past years with both chambers drafting their bills before the Memorial Day recess for the first time since the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994, final passage of the bill and its increase for NIH are far from secured. President Clinton's veto threats for both the House and Senate versions mean that quick enactment of the bill is unlikely, and a final bill capable of securing the President's signature may have to wait until high-level negotiations in the early fall between the President's top officials and the congressional leadership can come up with additional billions to bring social services and education funding closer to the President's request. - June 2, 2000 AAAS R&D Budget and Policy Program American Association for the Advancement of Science 1200 New York Ave, NW Washington, DC 20005 (202) 326-6607 science_policy@aaas.org http://www.aaas.org/spp/R&D

Table 1. National Institutes of Health
House Appropriations Committee Action on R&D in the FY 2001 Budget
(budget authority in millions of dollars)

Table 2. Department of Health and Human Services
House Appropriations Committee Action on R&D in the FY 2001 Budget
(budget authority in millions of dollars)

AAAS estimates based on FY 2001 appropriations bills. Includes conduct of R&D and R&D facilities.
FY 2000 and FY 2001 request figures based on OMB R&D data and supplemental agency budget data.
All figures are rounded to the nearest million. Changes calculated from unrounded figures.
1 Formerly the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research.
June 2, 2000 - House and Senate Appropriations Committee-approved funding levels.
These appropriations may be amended or rejected on the House or Senate floors.