Senate panel approves 2% bump for NIH budget in 2024

To the relief of biomedical research advocates, a Senate spending panel has approved a modest budget increase of 2% for the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The bump to $47.8 billion roughly matches President Joe Biden’s request for the 2024 fiscal year that begins this fall. Although below the rate of biomedical inflation, it is far more generous than a corresponding House of Representatives bill that would slash NIH’s budget by 6% . Advocacy groups welcomed the measure approved on 27 July by the Senate appropriations committee. “The Committee laid down an important marker for the appropriations process going forward by protecting and growing funding for the National Institutes of Health,” Research!America said in a statement. Mental health and Alzheimer’s disease research are each tagged for $100 million increases in the bill, and cancer research for a boost of $60 million. The Senate panel would provide level funding of $1.5 billion for the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, whereas the House measure would cut the 1-year-old agency to $500 million. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which is cut 17% in the House bill, would stay flat at $9.2 billion in the Senate measure. It would also preserve a new CDC center for forecasting disease outbreaks that is zeroed out in the House bill, but would trim its $50 million budget by 10%. The bill does not include three funding bans in th...
Source: Science of Aging Knowledge Environment - Category: Geriatrics Source Type: research