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STATUS OF 110TH CONGRESS
With only four weeks until Members leave for the
Memorial Day recess, Congress has its work cut
out for it as it strives to finalize (prior to
Memorial Day) a supplemental appropriations bill
to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,
complete a FY2008 budget resolution to provide
the Appropriations Committees with an overall
funding level for domestic discretionary
programs, pass a stem-cell research bill to send
to the President, agree on an “innovation”
agenda, and begin the process of taking up
FY2008 appropriations bills.
FY2008 BUDGET RESOLUTION
The House of Representatives still has not named
conferees to negotiate differences with the
Senate on their respective FY2008 Budget
Resolutions. If the House and Senate Budget
negotiators do not reconcile their different
budget blueprints before May 15, the
Appropriations Committees are allowed to begin
moving spending bills without a budget
framework.
Of course, the most important aspect of the
budget resolution (at least for FASEB and the
broader research community) is the overall
number that the budget committees make available
for domestic discretionary programs. If FASEB
goals are to be achieved (at least in respect
for the funding levels we have recommended for
NIH, NSF, DOE’s Office of Science, USDA’s
National Research Initiative, VA medical
research and NASA), a generous allocation for
non-defense domestic discretionary spending is
required. The Senate and House took the
necessary initial steps to increase funding for
non-defense discretionary programs when each
designated a much greater amount for these
programs than was provided by the President in
his FY2008 budget request. Specifically, the
Senate provided an additional $16 billion for
non-defense discretionary spending (on top of
the President’s request) and the House provided
$22 billion more for non-defense domestic
discretionary spending than the President
proposed for the fiscal year that begins October
1, 2007.
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ACTIVITIES INVOLVING
FY08 APPROPRIATIONS CYCLE
FASEB Encourages House to Support Dear
Colleague Letter to Increase NIH’s Budget – 182
Members Sign-on!
FASEB partnered with the broader medical
research community to ask individual Members in
the House of Representatives to sign-on to a
Dear Colleague letter from
Representatives Edward Markey (D-MA), David
Reichert (R-WA), Henry Waxman (D-CA),
Christopher Shays (R-CT), Janice Schakowsky
(D-IL) and Christopher Smith (R-NJ) requesting
that Appropriations Committee Members provide a
6.7 percent increase for the National Institutes
of Health (NIH) in FY2008. FASEB has stated that
a 6.7 percent increase in NIH funding for each
of the next three years would at least recoup
the losses caused by biomedical research
inflation since 2003.
During the nine days leading up to the deadline
for signatures, FASEB’s Board of Directors and
Science Policy Committee Members contacted
Members of the House of Representative and
requested their support. A total of 182 House
Members signed the Dear Colleague letter, which
was provided to House Appropriations Chairman
David Obey (D-WI) and Ranking Member Jerry Lewis
(R-CA) on April 26th. It is also important to
remember that none of the 66 House
Appropriations Committee Members signed the
letter because of an established policy not to
sign letters of request directed to the Chairman
of the Appropriations Committee. We can
therefore safely assume that more than half of
the House of Representatives are on record
supporting a 6.7% increase for NIH in FY2008.
VA Medical Research Receives $32.5 million
in Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Bill
The House and Senate passed the emergency
supplemental appropriations conference report
(H.R. 1591), which includes an additional $32.5
million for VA medical research. While the
President has indicated that he plans to veto
the bill because of the requirement that
American troops must begin withdrawing from Iraq
by October 1, 2007, the money for VA medical
research is certain to be included in the
revised legislation that is expected to be sent
to the President by mid-May. FASEB President Leo
T. Furcht, M.D., sent a thank you letter to all
of the conferees on Emergency Supplemental
Appropriations Bill. As background, the House
had initially included $35 million for the
Medical and Prosthetics Research Program at the
VA, while the Senate recommended $30 million.
The conferees split the difference and settled
on $32.5 million.
FASEB Recommends Appropriation of $6.5
Billion for NSF to Subcommittee on Commerce,
Justice and Science
In testimony submitted to the House Committee on
Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice
and Science, FASEB outlined the need to increase
funding for NSF. According to FASEB, "NSF is an
essential source of basic science funding in the
United States and has been a significant force
in enabling the U.S. to remain at the forefront
of global science and engineering. If our nation
is to retain its competitive edge, we must make
a commitment to continue to increase funding
levels for this prized agency. A failure to do
so will damage our ability to recruit and retain
a new generation of scientists and engineers and
with that our position as the leader in science
and technology."
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INSIDE (The Beltway) SCOOP- Jon
Retzlaff
House and Senate Appropriations Committee
Chairmen David Obey (D-WI) and Robert Byrd
(D-WV) have indicated that they plan to begin
marking up appropriations bills in mid-May. The
challenge they face in reaching this goal is
that the House and Senate Budget Committees have
not met to conference the budget resolution,
which provides the overall amount of
discretionary spending that can be allocated by
the different appropriations subcommittees.
However, even without the final numbers,
appropriations subcommittee staffs have been
working overtime to prepare their respective
bills for mark-up in mid-May or June.
In order to provide the appropriations
subcommittees with the flexibility they’ll need
to ensure significant increases for the programs
we advocate for, the research community is
encouraging potential Budget Committee conferees
to support the higher funding level for domestic
discretionary programs proposed in the House
Budget Resolution (H. Con. Res. 99). A total of
$451 billion is proposed in the House measure,
which is $6 billion more than proposed in the
Senate Budget Resolution (S. Con. Res. 21).
In terms of NIH funding, a generous allocation
to the Labor-Health-Education (L/HHS)
appropriations subcommittee is going to be
necessary in order for subcommittee members to
provide NIH with a significant increase in FY
2008. This is due to the President proposing a
$2.5 billion increase for Pell Grants in FY2008,
as well as recommending a $1 billion increase
for No Child Left Behind. It’s difficult to
imagine that a Democratic Congress will go below
the President’s request for these important
programs. In essence, the first $3.5 billion of
any increase that is provided to the L/HHS
appropriations subcommittee is essentially
reserved for those two programs. If NIH is to
receive the community’s recommendation of 6.7%
in FY2008, I estimate that an allocation
increase of between $8 billion and $12 billion
will be required. While it may appear unlikely
that such a large increase would be provided,
many Members of Congress are clearly frustrated
that so many important programs have suffered
during the past few years. Therefore, I continue
to remain optimistic about the funding
environment for NIH in FY2008.
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