The House of Representatives Labor-Health and Human Services-Education Appropriations Subcommittee (LHHS) approved a $1 billion increase for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) providing NIH with $32 billion for FY11— an amount equal to President Obama's request for FY11.
In a written statement, the chairman of the House panel, Rep. David R. Obey (D-WI), said that “continued support for biomedical research was one of the bill's priorities.” He went on, “within limited resources, this year's bill puts the emphasis on translating basic research results into practical and available cures and treatments.”

He also said that the bill sets aside up to $50 million of the $1b NIH increase for the Cures Acceleration Network (CAN). That is significantly less than the amount included in the original Senate language ($500 million) and less than Sen. Specter, the main proponent of CAN, has been talking about ($1 -$2 billion). 

The Senate LHHS Appropriations Subcommittee is expected to write its own bill in the next couple of weeks.

To ask your Senator to support an increase of $35 for the NIH for FY11, please take a moment and enter your zip code in the box to your right. You will be taken directly to the CLS advocacy site, with a prepared letter available for your use.  Simply sign your name and the letter will be emailed to your elected officials.

On July 12, Dr. Harold Varmus assumed the Directorship of the National Cancer Institute (NCI).  No stranger to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) campus, Varmus was the Director of the NIH from 1993 to 1999.         

Varmus spent part of his first day outlining his priorities and the challenges facing the NCI before an auditorium full of NCI staffers. “Everything we do and everything that we say will be based on evidence,” Dr. Varmus said.

Among his priorities:

• Reforming the clinical trials system. Varmus referenced a recent report by an Institute of Medicine committee that recommended substantial restructuring and increased funding of NCI’s Clinical Trials Cooperative Group Program.
• Using the resources available at the Mark O. Hatfield Clinical Research Center, a facility that was planned and developed during Varmus’ tenure as NIH director, more efficiently.
• Building more productive partnerships that will speed the cancer drug approval process.

In his remarks, Varmus encouraged the NCI staff to have fun, even while researching such a challenging disease. Varmus reminded the audience, "We have to remember that the great achievements in science have almost always begun with an individual scientist having an unexpected idea."

To view an archived Webcast of Dr. Varmus' Town Hall, please go to http://videocast.nih.gov/PastEvents.asp.

Without a doubt this is one of the most difficult budget years Capitol Hill has faced in decades. 
Instead of the standard budget that projects revenue and spending for the next five years, Congress passed a weak measure that restricts spending by the Appropriations Committee.

The “budget enforcement resolution” Democrats substituted for a traditional budget resolution sets discretionary spending for FY2011 at $1.12 trillion, about $7 billion less than Obama’s. It also sets a goal of cutting deficits to the point where revenues equal all spending except for interest payments on the debt.

With less money provided to the Appropriators, more federal agencies face potentially significant budget cuts.

Recently, House Appropriations Chairman David Obey (D-WI) warned groups seeking to increase funding in education, health and labor programs that those programs could be cut by an additional $3.5 billion from President Barack Obama’s budget request. Since the National Institutes of Health (NIH) makes up 1/5 of the entire Labor-Health and Human Services-Education (LHHS) Appropriations bill, the small increase provided for the NIH in President Obama’s budget is in real jeopardy.

At the same time, the National Science Foundation fared well during the House Commerce-Justice-Science Appropriations (CJS) Committee consideration of its bill. The CJS bill funded the NSF at President Obama’s full budget request, but the Appropriations panel made significant funding changes within the agency. According to the House passed CJS bill, NSF would receive $7.4 billion, an increase over the FY10 enacted level of $498 million, or 7.2%. Within that total, the subcommittee reduced funding for Research and Related Activities—from the $6 billion requested to $5.96 billion—and increased Education and Human Resources, from the $892 million requested to $958 million.

Congress is supposed to pass 12 individual Appropriations bills by October 1, 2010.  Few if any of the FY2011 funding bills are expected to be approved separately by Congress; rather, most are likely to be bundled into an omnibus package after the November elections.