Lydia Polimeni/National Institutes of Health
By Jocelyn Kaiser
Congress has approved a $2 billion raise, to $39.1 billion, for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in a 2019 spending bill approved by House and Senate negotiators last night.
As expected, the 5% boost matches the Senate’s proposed spending leveland surpasses a $1.25 billion increase in a draft billpassed by the House of Representatives. The Trump administration had requested $34.8 billionfor the fiscal year that begins 1 October. It is the fourth year in a row that the NIH has received a substantial increase after more than a decade of flat budgets.
The final bill funding the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS, NIH’s parent agency) also matches the amounts the Senate measure had tagged for NIH research in specific areas. It includes $425 million more for Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (bringing the total to $2.34 billion); a $100 million increase for the Cancer Moonshot, or $400 million total; and a $86 million raise for the All of Us precision medicine study, for a total of $376 million.
The bill ignores a Trump administration request to fold three HHS agencies into NIH, including the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. It does not include a provision in the House measure that would have banned NIH from funding research using fetal tissue from an elective abortion.
It is the first time in 22 years that Congress has approved a bill funding HHS before the fiscal year begins, according to Congressional Quarterly. The bill, dubbed a “minibus” because it combines funding for HHS and the Department of Defense, next goes to President Trump for his signature.
Source: Science Mag