NIH & NSF Budgets In Jeopardy

DATE: January 11, 2005
TO: All Members of the Congressional Liaison Committee
FROM: The Joint Steering Committee for Public Policy
RE: Call to Action

Congress returned to a lame-duck session after the November elections and approved a 2% increase in the NIH budget (the smallest increase in over 20 years) and a 2% decrease in the NSF budget. With increasing federal deficits, mounting costs of the war in Iraq, and the Administration's pledge to extend tax cuts, funding increases for the NIH & NSF are going to be extremely difficult for the next four years. A leaked Administration budget projection suggests that the Bush Administration will propose to cut the NIH budget slightly more than 1% in FY 2006. (Details can be found at the end of this message.)

As you will all appreciate, we are facing the most serious financial crisis in 15 years. Support in Congress for funding increases to the National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation budgets depend on engagement of biomedical scientists in the political process. You can help by doing the following:

1. Refer at least five of your colleagues to join the Congressional Liaison Committee (CLC). Look around your lab or department. We are certain that at least five student, postdoc, staff or faculty colleagues will want to participate. Be sure that they join the CLC. The CLC is free and open to all scientists and students of science. Helping to educate lawmakers about basic research science and science policy is the responsibility of the research community regardless of career level. Lawmakers appreciate hearing from their constituents who are experts in the field in which they are advocating. As you know, membership is only a commitment to receive alerts and/or action calls periodically. Of course we hope that members will respond to these communications as recommended. This has been made exceedingly easy by the JSC’s Online Advocacy Center. The JSC/CLC do not rent, sell or give away the email addresses of its members.

2. Print out and display the attached poster at the appropriate place at your institution and lab. The poster encourages individuals to visit our website and learn more about the importance of scientific citizenship and to join the CLC.

3. Stay tuned for more information and action. The CLC will need you to write letters, visit the district office of your Member of Congress, and/or come to Washington DC for Capitol Hill Days. We now have available a small amount of funds to held defer the costs of travel to Washington, DC.

Thanks for your continuing support and help with this recruiting effort.

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Background: Congress Completes FY 2005 Federal Budget

A lame-duck session of Congress completed the nine remaining FY 2005 appropriations bills. The White House, coming off significant political gains in the November elections, insisted on maintaining strict spending limits. In order to meet these limits, Congress cut nearly $8 billion from the remaining appropriation bills, eventually approving the FY 2005 Omnibus Appropriations bill on Saturday, November 20. The House approved the bill on a vote of 344-51, while the Senate vote was 65-30.

The final bill contained $388 billion. This represents a total freeze in funding for domestic programs over last year. As a result, nearly all programs were flat-funded. A handful of top priority programs received small increases. However, all of these increases had to be fully offset through cuts to other programs within the bill. In the end, Congress agreed to an across-the-board cut of .8% to all domestic programs to ensure that all of the President's top priorities received full funding.

The bill provided the National Institutes of Health with $28.4 billion, an increase of $563 million or 2% over last year's figure. This is the smallest NIH increase in over 20 years. Please refer to the attached graph to get an overview of NIH budget increases for the last two decades (in % of increase over the previous fiscal year.)

The National Science Foundation was hit with substantial cuts in FY2005. After taking into account the .8% across the board cut, the NSF received $5.47 billion, a reduction of $108 million, or 2% less than last year's budget.

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Contact Lynn Marquis at (301)-347-9309 if you have any questions.