David Pittman
The NIH will face an 11% cut in next year’s budget unless Congress gets its
act together.
After months of campaigning for increased research funding on Capitol Hill,
lobbyists remain uncertain about next year’s budgets for federal science
agencies, including the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Unless Congress takes action before January 3, 2013, every federal
department across the board will have its budget cut. This is the result of
the Budget Control Act of 2011 that lawmakers passed last year to resolve
the debt-ceiling crisis. In an effort to slow down the rate of growth of US
debt, the law threatened automatic cuts to federal spending unless Congress
passed a deficit reduction bill with $1.5 trillion in cuts over the next 10
years by December 23, 2011. Despite deliberations by a 12-member bipartisan
super-committee, lawmakers failed to reach a consensus.
When President Barak Obama signed the Budget Control Act of 2011, he might
have been signing an 11% cut in the NIH 2013 budget. Source: Whitehouse.gov
In an analysis released last week, the Federation of American Societies for
Experimental Biology (FASEB) calculates that these automatic across-the-
board cuts could mean an 11.1% cut in the NIH’s extramural budget. This
translates into about $2.8 billion less for the agency’s budget, leaving it
at 2008 funding levels.
The NIH estimates that those cuts could result in 2400 fewer grants awarded
next year. This comes at a time when the agency is already reporting the
lowest funding rate of grant applications in history with only one in six
grants being funded.
“We are concerned we could lose an entire generation of younger researchers
,” said FASEB director of legislative relations Jennifer Zeitzer.
While Congress has options, none look particularly promising, according to
Zeitzer. For example, Congress could vote to repeal the law, but President
Barack Obama has vowed to veto any such bill. While no one on Capitol Hill
likes the idea of the across-the-board cuts sequestration, which gives no
priority to any program, it has not provided a large enough incentive to
reach a compromise as of yet.
“The idea that Congress can get its act together and do something seems
pretty remote,” said Zeitzer.
The NIH’s budget will remain in limbo for some time since lawmakers are not
expected to take action on the automatic cuts until after the presidential
elections in November. So, supporters of science funding will have to wait
at least six months to find out if their petitions have been heard.
Ultimately, the November elections could sway an outcome. For example, if
Democrats maintain control of the Senate and President Obama wins reelection
, Zeitzer expects more legislative gridlock with the Republican-controlled
House of Representatives.
“I think you’ll have a hard time talking to anyone who’ll want to
speculate because we honestly just don’t know,” said Zeitzer.
In the end, Congress may ultimately kick the sequestration can further down
the road and delay the automatic cuts for several months until a greater
consensus is reached.
Meanwhile, lawmakers are continuing to move forward with the 2013 federal
budget, ignoring the looming cuts for now. The White House has asked that
the 2013 NIH budget remain the same as 2012 at $30.86 billion, but neither
the House nor Senate committees have released its proposals.
