(March 17, 2005) The Senate voted 63 to 37 to accept an amendment proposed by Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) to the FY 2006 budget resolution that will allow $1.5 billion
more for NIH in the appropriations process.
Specter's amendment recommends bolstering the budget's function 550, which covers health, by $1.5 billion for NIH. The increase would be offset by a reduction in function 920, an administrative account.
NIH's $28.8 billion FY 2006 budget request is "totally, totally, totally insufficient," Specter contended on the Senate floor during debate on the budget resolution March 16.
Not only will this amount result in the funding of 402 less grants for the agency, it also fails to take into account the 3.5% biomedical research and development price index, said Specter, who chairs the Appropriations/Labor-HHS Subcommittee.
With the amendment, the Senate budget resolution will allow $29.9 billion for NIH in FY 2006. The House resolution, approved by the Budget Committee March 10, matches the President's request, allowing NIH a $196 million increase over FY 2005.
"When you have biomedical research [inflation] up 3.5% on $28 million what you really have is a cut of $980 mil., almost a billion dollars," Specter stressed. He also argued that the Appropriations/Labor-HHS Subcommittee lacks the funds to adequately increase the agency's coffers. "We just do not have the room," he said.
In his remarks in opposition to Specter's amendment, Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Chair Mike Enzi (R-WY) explained that NIH management will undergo a process of modernization as part of Congress' reauthorization of the agency.
"I do look forward to modernizing NIH through the reauthorization process later this year, and I'm excited to build on the great work of Dr. [Elias] Zerhouni [MD], the director of NIH," Enzi said. "We'll be considering management reforms, including the NIH Roadmap, which will improve overall efficiency."
The House Energy and Commerce/Health Subcommittee is convening a hearing on NIH reauthorization March 17.
Although the HELP chair said that he opposes Specter's amendment, he said he looks forward to working with the Pennsylvania Republican later this year to determine the agency's appropriate allocation of funding.
Any concerns about NIH's FY 2006 budget can wait until the appropriations process, Enzi said.
It is not the budget resolution's place to direct funds into specific agencies like NIH, said Enzi, who also serves on the Budget Committee.
Congress has a process for doing appropriations, he said. "This part of process is not to go through items in detail, but to establish some caps on spending."
"[NIH does] a marvelous job of allocating what they get, and we confer with them regularly to see how they're doing, how quickly they can expand and how easy it would be to include extra money. The difficulty again is looking at the overall picture to see what we can do," Enzi commented.
Reauthorizing NIH has been on the agenda since the 108th Congress, when Energy and Commerce Chair Joe Barton (R-Texas) announced his intention to explore reauthorizing the agency and reexamine what he called the "serendipitous" origins of NIH's 27 institutes and centers.
