FASEB President Testifies on NIH Funding at House Appropriations Hearing
 FASEB President, Robert E. Palazzo, Ph.D., was invited to testify before the House Appropriations Labor-HHS Subcommittee, chaired by Representative David Obey (D-WI), in support of increased funding for NIH. “With every excellent idea left unfunded, we stand to miss or delay the critical discoveries that could lead to therapies for our most debilitating health conditions,” said Palazzo, during his March 13th appearance before Congress. He continued, “We have moved past the point where scientists are spending more time filling out applications than doing research in the lab. Now we’re at the point where many may be giving up.”
Palazzo praised Chairman Obey and the Subcommittee for their leadership in championing NIH funding, and addressed the grave consequences of continuing the current trend of flat-funding. “During the next 25 years, the number of Americans with chronic diseases is projected to reach 46 million,” Palazzo stated. “If we are to successfully confront the health care challenges associated with a growing elderly population, it’s going to require sustained support for basic and clinical research.”
The FASEB President also spoke to the question Chairman Obey had raised in previous hearings, namely what the cost would be of failing to adequately fund NIH. “Young scientists see their mentors struggle to maintain grant funding from NIH and question whether they should invest in such a risky, albeit noble, career,” he said. “Applications for R01 grants from previously unfunded scientists showed an appreciable drop in 2007, declining by nearly 600 applications from the 2006 level. That represents a loss of hundreds of new scientists and all of the talent and intellectual capital that they bring to the system.”
But the even greater tragedy, Palazzo concluded, would be the loss of hope to the patients who desperately need the treatments and therapies founded upon the basic discoveries funded by NIH. “We can help Jenna,” he said, referring to an earlier witness whose moving testimony detailed her daughter’s struggle with the kidney disease, focal segmental glomerulosclerosis
(FSGS). “Researchers receiving NIH funds are
united by a compelling desire: to investigate
the underlying biology of human disease and use
this knowledge to improve our health and save
lives… [Congress] can fulfill the extraordinary
scientific and medical promise of biomedical
research by renewing our commitment to NIH.”
To read the complete testimony submitted for the
record, please click
here.
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The House and Senate Pass the FY2009 Budget Resolution
Yesterday, the House and this morning, the Senate passed their respective $3 trillion FY2009 budget resolutions with earmarks the House and Senate Budget Committees incorporated last week, thereby defeating the President’s effort to impose a moratorium on earmarks. The House budget resolution passed on a vote of 212 to 207, and the Senate resolution passed by 51 to 44. The budget resolutions are nonbinding and serve as guidelines for spending bills that will come up later in the year; in other words, the resolutions have no power or authority under the law and simply serve as blueprints for how the two houses of Congress should fund various government programs in FY2009. If Congress does not enact additional legislation for each particular area of the resolutions, then it will not provide (or appropriate) funds to a given agency or program, despite the text of the House and Senate budget resolutions.
Although the House and Senate budget resolutions largely track on spending issues, there are some significant differences that could protract negotiations between the House and Senate later this year and next. For example, the Senate resolution calls for the creation of a standby $35 billion auxiliary stimulus package next year if the economy continues to stumble, and the House plan doesn’t contain any such provision.
When the House and Senate return from their two week Easter recess on March 31st, they’ll begin assembling the individual appropriations bills for the various agencies.
National Institutes of Health (NIH)
The House of Representatives’ budget resolution, H.Con.Res. 312, increases funding for health under Function 550, which includes NIH, by $4.5 billion over FY2008 and by $3.1 billion over the President’s request. The full text of the House budget resolution is available at
http://budget.house.gov/09legislative_text.pdf.
The Senate held a long debate on S.Con.Res. 70, the FY2009 budget resolution, during which various Senators proposed a score of amendments. The Senate may have set a recent record for the number of amendments it considered under one budget resolution bill, having taken up over 40 throughout the day. Most relevantly, Senators Arlen Specter (R-PA) and Tom Harkin (D-IA) offered an amendment to increase funding for NIH; yesterday, the Senate passed the Specter-Harkin amendment by a vote of 95 to 4. This year’s Specter-Harkin amendment adds $2.1 billion for NIH to the Budget Committee’s resolution and increases the NIH budget by a total of $3 billion over FY2008. The Chairman’s Mark for the FY2009 Senate budget resolution is available at
http://budget.senate.gov/democratic/documents/BudRes09CHAIRMAN'SMARK030508FINAL.pdf.
The Campaign for Medical Research (CMR), of which FASEB is a member, sent a letter on Tuesday to every Senate office to urge Senators to vote for the Harkin-Specter amendment. CMR’s letter is available
here.
Additionally, last week, FASEB, the Campaign for Medical Research, the Ad Hoc Group for Medical Research, the National Health Council and Research!America sent a joint letter to Members of the House and Senate Budget Committees as well as to the House and Senate leadership. The letter urged them to support the largest possible number for non-defense discretionary spending in the FY2009 budget to provide NIH with the best opportunity for a 6.5% increase in FY2009 in compensation for “several years of flat budgets and mounting inflation.” You can view the health groups’ letter to Congress
here.
National Science Foundation (NSF) and Department of Energy (DOE)
The House budget, H.Con.Res. 312, includes a substantial increase in funding for NSF and DOE’s Office of Science under the America COMPETES Act (ACI) and includes a Sense of the House specifically calling for sufficient funding for the ACI. The President’s budget request included a $1.6 billion increase over the actual FY2008 appropriation plus inflation (baseline funding) for Function 250 (Science, Space and Technology). The House budget resolution goes further, allocating an additional $379 million to the function. According to a staffer in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) Office, the large increase over baseline funding reflects the House of Representatives’ commitment under the ACI to NSF and DOE.
Section 601 under Title VI of the House budget outlines the sense of the House on the innovation agenda and the ACI. It provides that under the ACI, “it is the sense of the House that the House should provide sufficient funding so that our Nation may continue to be the world leader in education, innovation and economic growth.” The text of Section 601’s “Sense of the House on the Innovation Agenda and American COMPETES Act” is available
here.
The full text of the House budget resolution is available at
http://budget.house.gov/09legislative_text.pdf.
In the Senate, Senators Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) and Lamar Alexander (R-TN) introduced an amendment (the Bingaman-Alexander amendment), SA 4173, to increase funding for NSF and DOE’s Office of Science. The Senate agreed to the amendment yesterday by a voice vote. The amendment adds $600 million to Function 250 (General Science) to create room in the Senate budget resolution for the President’s FY2009 request for DOE ($4.722 billion) and NSF ($6.854 billion). The amendment offsets the $600 million for NSF and DOE with administrative expenses in Function 920. Last year, the Senate passed a similar Bingaman-Alexander amendment (97-1) to the FY2008 budget resolution that added $1 billion to Function 250.
Senators Bingaman and Alexander introduced the amendment because whereas normally, the budget resolution would take the FY2008 funding levels for NSF and DOE and increase them slightly for inflation, this approach for FY2009 after the FY2008 Omnibus shortfall would result in a $1.4 billion gap between the President’s request and the Senate budget resolution for NSF and DOE. Since the Senate Budget Committee only added $800 million to Function 250 for General Science, the Bingaman-Alexander amendment makes up the $600 million difference to bring the Senate Budget Committee’s document up to the President’s request for the two agencies under the ACI.
The Chairman’s Mark for the FY2009 Senate budget resolution is available at
http://budget.senate.gov/democratic/documents/BudRes09CHAIRMAN'SMARK030508FINAL.pdf.
Department of Agriculture (USDA)
The House budget resolution, H.Con.Res. 312, calls for $21.529 billion in FY2009 for Function 350, which includes agricultural programs.
The full text of the House budget resolution is available at
http://budget.house.gov/09legislative_text.pdf
Department of Veterans Affairs (VA)
The House budget resolution, H.Con.Res. 312, authorizes $93.268 billion in FY2009 for Function 700, which includes veterans programs.
The full text of the House budget resolution is available at
http://budget.house.gov/09legislative_text.pdf
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FASEB Sends Letters to Congress; Urges Scientists to Contact their Representatives
We are at a crucial point in the process for determining FY2009 funding levels, and the House Appropriations Committee has set a deadline of March 19 for Members of the House of Representatives to file their programmatic requests. Earlier this week, FASEB President Bob Palazzo called upon the E-Action List members to contact their Representatives and ask them to include an increase in funding for NIH as one of their priorities for FY2009. If you are on the E-Action List and received Dr. Palazzo’s message, please contact your Representative now. If you are not a member of the E-Action List, please join
http://capwiz.com/faseb/home/. Your voice is necessary.
Representatives Ed Markey (D-MA) and Dave Reichert (R-WA) are circulating a “Dear Colleague” letter asking their colleagues in the House of Representatives to join them in a letter Appropriations Chair David Obey (D-WI) and Ranking Member Jerry Lewis (R-CA)
to request a 6.5% increase for NIH in FY2009. By March 11, they had 106 co-signers. Robert Palazzo, Ph.D., FASEB’s President, wrote to all the Representatives who had not joined the Markey-Reichert effort yet and urged them to do so. The letter FASEB sent to Representatives urging them to sign on to the House “Dear Colleague” for NIH is available
here, and the House “Dear Colleague” for NIH is available
here.
As part of a larger coalition effort to secure more funding for the National Science Foundation, FASEB President Dr. Robert Palazzo sent letters to 29 key Members of the House of Representatives urging them to sign onto a “Dear Colleague” letter Representatives Vern Ehlers (R-MI) and Rush Holt (D-NJ) have circulated. This letter requests that NSF receive $7.326 billion in FY2009. The recipients of the FASEB letter were Representatives who have universities in their districts that are top NSF grant recipients but who have not yet signed the NSF “Dear Colleague” letter. The FASEB letter notes the amount of NSF funding at the local university and also emphasizes the importance of this investment for the nation’s well being and prosperity. A sample letter that FASEB sent to 29 Representatives urging them to sign on to the House “Dear Colleague” for NSF is available
here, and the House “Dear Colleague” for NSF is available
here.
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