Advocacy Archive
Enough with Elections, Back to NIH and NSF Funding
Double-Digit Increases in FY 2001
November 18, 1999
Dear Colleague:
We are (almost) at our final answer Cue the cheesy suspense music and disco lighting. Congress and the President have worked a deal for the FY 2000 federal budget, and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is the winning contestant. The budget agreement is an omnibus legislative package that includes five of the government's 13 spending bills. It gives NIH a lot more money, although it requires that NIH defer spending a portion of its budget until the end of FY 2000.
Confident? You bet, Regis. Recall from earlier emails that on October 1st, the beginning of the new fiscal year, few appropriations bills had been enacted. So for the past seven weeks, much of the government has been functioning under a series of “continuing resolutions� allowing agencies to operate at last year's levels while Congress ironed out internal differences and differences with the White House.
The NIH budget itself has been relatively non-controversial in the plan about to be passed. On track with the drive to double NIH research in five years, Congress has given NIH a 15 percent increase for the second year in a row, bringing its total to nearly $18 billion, $2.3 billion more than FY 99. In talking about the bill this morning, Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK), chair of the Appropriations Committee, said NIH is getting these enormous increases in order to reduce health costs for the baby boomer generation, and he specifically referred to translating research into applications.
But the NIH budget is part of a larger package - the Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Appropriations bill - that each year is one of the last bills passed. It is a lightning rod for controversial issues - abortion, fetal tissue research, needle-exchange, and this year, money for new teachers. In fact, teachers proved to be a sticking point between Congress and the Administration, leading to an initial veto by President Clinton. Unable to overturn this or several other budget vetoes (veti? I might need to phone a friend on that), Congress was forced to come up with some fiscal gimmicks in order to develop a budget the President would sign.
One gimmick mandates NIH to defer spending $4 billion until the very end of FY 2000. Folks at NIH are of course very happy with their increase, and most are not overly concerned about the deferred spending mandate, since the way the grant funding system currently operates means that a portion of the NIH budget isn't spent until later in the fiscal year anyway. Still, some NIH'rs acknowledge that NIH spends too much of its money at the end of year now, and holding even more until the last minute is an open invitation to mistakes and poor oversight.
A broader gimmick is an across the board 0.38 percent cut for all federal agency budgets. The President's capitulation on this issue, which came after he was given flexibility in applying that cut, broke the budget deadlock. Because it's so small, the cut is seen as a largely symbolic.
In contrast to NIH, the less-expanded National Science Foundation (NSF) budget for FY 2000 was approved in mid-October. Congress provided NSF with a total budget of $3.91 billion, an increase of $240 million or 7 percent over FY 99. Within that budget, the Research and Related Activities budget category, which contains NSF's Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences directorate, also was increased by 7 percent. In earlier email, I told you about a close call in the Senate when questions were raised about NSF's funding for behavioral and social science. We were successful in overturning that, and all signs are that it continues to be a moot point. NSF's 7 percent increase is seen as a large one, but it is also true that NSF Director Rita Colwell made little progress in convincing Congress that NSF should be in the same league as NIH.
Congress now is on the verge of going home. The government will operate under a one-day continuing resolution while the agreement moves through both houses. Assuming the House and Senate are able to limit the end-of-session rush to attach unrelated riders to the budget bill (a big assumption), they should be outta here tonight or tomorrow. When it is all over, we'll see details of the spending plan. I already wrote you that behavioral science was well supported by both the Senate and House. That support will continue. One new bonus could be that the NIH Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research gets an extra $20 million. That one is 50/50. Audience, what do you think?
Best, Alan