A Senate spending panel yesterday approved a bill[1] that will give the National Institutes of Health (NIH) a $31 billion budget in 2014, a 7% increase over this year's budget depressed by the across-the-board federal budget cuts known as sequestration. The measure would also expand research on Alzheimer's disease and extend NIH's policy on public access to research papers to more agencies.
The bill funding the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and other agencies was approved earlier this week[2] by a Senate appropriations subcommittee and marked up yesterday by the full Senate Appropriations Committee. It would give NIH $30.955 billion, which is $147 million below the president's request for 2014. At the same time, it is $2 billion more than the $28.9 billion that it has to spend this year.
In a report[3] accompanying the spending bill, the committee explains that it rejects an administration proposal to increase from 2.5% to 3% the pot of money that it now transfers from NIH to other HHS departments. If NIH keeps that money, its funding level will then match the president's request for a $471 million increase, the report says.
The committee also declined to follow the president's request to earmark $80 million for Alzheimer's research at the National Institute on Aging (NIA), calling it[4] "a dangerous precedent that could politicize the NIH peer review system." However, the committee expects that "a significant portion" of the $84 million increase for NIA will go to Alzheimer's, depending on the quality of proposals.
The bill would allot $40 million for NIH's share of a proposed $100 million brain-mapping initiative[5] across several federal agencies and $50 million for the Cures Acceleration Network, a component of NIH's National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences that will help fund the development of high-needs cures. The National Children's Study would receive $165 million, matching the president's request.
The measure adds $51 million to the president's request for the IDEA program, which sets aside funding for states with historically low success rates at NIH. Its 2014 budget would be $276 million, the same level as in 2012. But the committee rejects the Obama administration's plan to end NIH's Science Education and Partnership Awards program and close the agency's Office of Science Education on 30 September as part of a plan to reorganize the federal government's $3 billion portfolio for[6] science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education programs. "The Committee is not convinced that the quality of these programs would be maintained if they were moved to other Federal agencies," the report says[7] , telling NIH instead to continue funding them through 2014.
The bill would also help NIH follow through on a recently announced plan[8] to retire most of its research chimpanzees by lifting a congressional limit on how much funding NIH can spend on the federal chimpanzee sanctuary.
The committee approved the president's request for $10 million for new research on gun-related violence at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And it extends across HHS agencies an NIH policy requiring grantees to send copies of their peer-reviewed papers to the funding agency, which must provide free online access to the papers within 12 months of publication in a journal.
The bill now awaits a vote by the entire Senate. The House of Representatives Appropriations Committee, which has a much smaller pot of money to fund NIH and other agencies, has not yet taken up its version of the bill.
References
- ^ bill (thomas.loc.gov)
- ^ approved earlier this week (news.sciencemag.org)
- ^ report (thomas.loc.gov)
- ^ calling it (thomas.loc.gov)
- ^ brain-mapping initiative (news.sciencemag.org)
- ^ plan to reorganize the federal government's $3 billion portfolio for (news.sciencemag.org)
- ^ report says (thomas.loc.gov)
- ^ recently announced plan (news.sciencemag.org)
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