Senate Appropriations Bill - NIBIB
When the Senate returns on September 8, Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) wants the Senate to continue its work on the FY 2010 appropriations bills. The House has completed its consideration of all twelve bills. The Senate Appropriations Committee has drafted all of its bills except one, although fewer of them have been brought to the floor.
The Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education has completed work on its bill. Accompanying this legislation is Senate Report 111-66 which contains the funding recommendation for the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, which is part of the National Institutes of Health. This report can be viewed here .
There is no policy language in this report regarding NIBIB. It does contain the below funding recommendation:
The current budget (excluding stimulus funding) is $308.2 million. The Administration requested $312.7 million, an increase of 1.5 percent or $4.5 million over the current budget. The House appropriations bill recommends $319.2 million, an increase of 3.4 percent or $11 million over the current budget. The Senate Appropriations Committee bill recommended $313.5 million, an increase of 1.7 percent or $5.3 million.
Insight into the appropriators’ thinking on FY 2010 funding was provided by an introductory section on NIH:
“NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH
“The Committee recommends an overall funding level for the National Institutes of Health [NIH] of $30,758,788,000, the same as the budget request. This amount is $441,764,000 more than the regular fiscal year 2009 level, not including the $10,380,703,000 appropriated in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act [ARRA].
“The Committee understands that the recommended fiscal year 2010 funding level falls below the amount needed to keep up with biomedical inflation, and that the NIH could face severe financial pressures in fiscal year 2011. But the Committee notes that the record-high increase for the NIH in the ARRA greatly mitigates the need for more funding than the administration requested in fiscal year 2010. While additional funding for the NIH could help ease the budgetary pressures in fiscal year 2011, that alone is not a sufficient reason to go beyond the administration’s budget request in fiscal year 2010, especially when many other important programs in this bill that did not receive increases in the ARRA face immediate pressures of their own.”
See FYI #97 for the House committee report language on NIBIB
