AAAS R&D Funding Update May 15, 2000 -

Senate Adds $2.7 Billion to NIH Budget For $20.5 Billion Total

Go to: Table 1. FY 2001 NIH R&D in Senate Appropriations Committee Action Table 2. FY 2001 HHS R&D in Senate Appropriations Committee Action PDF version of this document Related sites: 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 Senate 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.)   On May 11, the Senate Appropriations Committee approved an FY 2001 Labor-HHS appropriations bill providing funding for the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education. The proposed Senate bill, which is scheduled to go to the Senate floor this week, demonstrates strong congressional support for biomedical research by providing $20.5 billion in FY 2001 for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), an increase of $2.7 billion or 15.2 percent over FY 2000 (see Table 1). The House Appropriations Committee has drafted but not approved its version of the Labor-HHS bill, which provides similar amounts for NIH; details of the House bill will be available shortly. President Clinton, however, quickly 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. The Senate appropriation of $20.5 billion would keep NIH on track to double its budget between FY 1998 and FY 2003, and would be $1.7 billion above the President's request. In February, President Clinton's proposed FY 2001 budget requested $18.8 billion for NIH in FY 2001. Although this would be a $1 billion increase for the agency, the percentage increase of 5.6 percent 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. NIH classifies 96 percent of its budget as R&D; the remainder is for research training and overhead costs. The Senate bill would provide $19.7 billion for NIH R&D, up $2.6 billion or 15.4 percent from the FY 2000 total. Every institute would receive an increase greater than 14 percent in the Senate bill, and three would receive increases greater than 20 percent (see Table 1). The largest percentage increase would go to the newest institute, the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM), which would receive $100 million for its third year, a substantial increase of $31 million or 45.0 percent reflecting the Senate's strong support for its work in rigorously reviewing complementary and alternative therapies. Most of the other institutes would receive increases between 14.8 and 15.5 percent. The National Cancer Institute (NCI) would once again have the largest budget with $3.8 billion, an increase of $492 million or 14.9 percent. The budget of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), NIH's primary supporter of HIV/AIDS research, would exceed $2 billion for first time with an appropriation of $2.1 billion, 15.0 percent more than FY 2000. The Senate bill would appropriate HIV/AIDS research funds within individual institute budgets, instead of in a consolidated account as the Administration proposed. The Senate bill 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 the Senate bill does not include an advance appropriation. In addition to these intramural construction funds, the Senate bill 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 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. 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 Senate Labor-HHS bill is 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 6.4 percent to $508 million, and R&D in the Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA) would increase by 6.6 percent to $65 million. HCFA finances R&D on health-care outcomes and alternative health-care delivery systems in Medicare and Medicaid. R&D in the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) would increase dramatically to $227 million (up 34.9 percent), with a special emphasis on research on medical errors reduction. Total HHS R&D would rise 14.9 percent to $20.8 billion. Figure 1. (Click on the image to view or download a full-page version of this chart) Although other R&D funding agencies have struggled to maintain their budgets in the past several years, NIH has enjoyed extraordinary success on Capitol Hill and its budget growth is accelerating. As shown in Figure 1, large increases in the past several years have enabled NIH to keep its average grant size ahead of the inflation rate while steadily increasing the number of Research Project Grants (RPG) awards. The President's FY 2001 requested increase, however, would keep the total number of RPGs at the FY 2000 level and would result in a drop in the RPG success rate. The FY 2001 Senate bill, by contrast, should provide sufficient funds to keep success rates steady or increasing while at the same time increasing both the number and average size of RPGs. The FY 2001 Senate Labor-HHS bill stands a good chance of winning full Senate approval by Memorial Day. If the House version moves as quickly through the House, a compromise Labor-HHS bill could be ready by June. 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 swift progress so far and the large increase for NIH are good news, 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. - May 12, 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
Senate 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
Senate 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.
May 15, 2000 - Senate Appropriations Committee-approved appropriations. These appropriations may be amended or rejected on the Senate floor.