Trump Administration Is Proposing a $7.2 Billion Cut for the Upcoming Year
National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Francis S. Collins testified June 22
before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and
Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies on his agency’s FY 2018
budget, which the White House is proposing to cut by $7.2 billion for the upcoming fiscal year.
The Trump administration budget request would fund NIH at $26.9
billion in FY 2018, a 21 percent reduction below the agency’s current
funding level. The president’s budget also seeks to find savings at NIH
by capping facilities and administrative (F&A) costs on grants at 10
percent, down from the current 28 percent. Coverage of these costs
enables institutions to build and maintain state-of-the-art laboratories
and other infrastructure vital to supporting research. (See this letter (269 KB PDF) from ACE and the higher education community to Secretary of Health and
Human Services Tom Price and the Office of Management and Budget for
details of the ramifications of these cuts.)
There seemed to be a general consensus among committee members that
the budget cuts were unacceptable, and that the research funded by NIH
was vital to maintaining the United States’ preeminence in medical
science. Roy Blunt (R-MO), chair of the subcommittee, outlined in his
opening remarks the economic and other impacts the cuts would have,
including the loss of an estimated 90,000 jobs nationwide. For his part,
Collins used his remarks
to discuss the depth and breadth of the research supported across the
institutes and centers of NIH without directly commenting on the
proposed cuts.
Under questioning from Ranking Member Patty Murray (D-WA) on the
issue of capping F&A costs, Collins acknowledged the concern among
institutions and told Sen. Murray he understood the importance of that
funding in making it possible for colleges and universities to perform
research. Collins also said that his agency was looking to identify
areas where reporting burdens might be reduced as a way of limiting
F&A costs on campuses, but these proposals would not do much to
offset cuts of the size proposed in the budget. Senators seemed
uniformly critical of the administration’s F&A proposal, with Lamar
Alexander (R-TN) going so far as to call it “harebrained” and “a
thoroughly awful idea and bad policy.”
Congress hopes to pass its FY 2018 appropriations bills before the
August recess, but it appears increasingly unlikely that it will meet
that goal.