FY 2012 Senate Appropriations Bill: National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering
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The Senate Appropriations Committee has approved its version of the FY 2012 Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Appropriations Bill. This measure provides funding for the National Institutes of Health and its National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering.
Senate Report 112-84
The following are selections from this report; page numbers are provided for reference to the pdf version of the report.
National Institutes of Health
The FY 2011 appropriation was $30,688.3 million The FY 2012 Administration request was $31,747.9 million, an increase of $1,059.6 million or 3.5 percent above the current budget The Senate Appropriations Committee recommends $30,498.3 million, a decrease of $190.0 million or 0.6 percent
In the report’s introductory section on NIH (page 84) the appropriators explain:
“The Committee regrets that fiscal constraints prevent a higher recommended funding level for NIH. With tight budgets likely to continue for the foreseeable future, the Committee strongly urges NIH to explore creative ways to rethink the way it allocates its funding. The alternative - continuing to nick away, little by little, at the success rate or the size of awards - will inevitably have a negative impact on young investigators, who represent the Nation’s future, and on high-risk, high-reward research opportunities.”
National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering
NIBIB is one of fourteen institutes within NIH, in addition to several centers and the National Library of Medicine.
The FY 2011 appropriation was $313.8 million The FY 2012 Administration request was $322.1 million, an increase of $8.3 million or 2.6 percent above the current budget The Senate Appropriations Committee recommends $333.7 million, an increase of $19.9 million or 6.3 percent
On page 105, the report states:
“The recommended increase for NIBIB over the fiscal year 2011 level results from the planned transfer of several grants focused on point-of-care diagnostics and biomedical imaging from NCRR.”