You may or may not recall that the federal government is still operating under a continuing resolution, which ends next Friday (March 6). On Wed, the House passed an omnibus bill to finish out fiscal year 2009 (ends Sept 30th). The AAMC has a nice summary of the health and biomedical research allocations. The biggies, of course, are NIH and NSF:
National Institutes of Health: The bill includes $30.317 billion for NIH, an increase of $937.5 million (3.2%) over the FY 2008 comparable. An accompanying explanatory statement notes the bill “provides funding for a 2% increase in the average cost of new and competing as well as non-competing grants.” The extramural salary cap is retained at Executive Level I, which is $196,700 for 2009. The explanatory statement also states, “NIH is encouraged to take steps to accelerate implementation of its conflict of interest policy for contract staff.”
In other portions, the omnibus increases funding for the FDA to $2.1 billion (a $335 million or 19.4% increase), and the NSF to $6.5 billion (a $363 million or 5.9% increase over funding provided in FY 2008). The NSF total includes $5.2 billion for research and related activities, a $339 million (7%) increase.
Looking ahead to 2010 and 2011, AAMC notes:
The budget overview assumes $675 billion in non-defense discretionary spending, including $78.7 billion for HHS, a $1.4 billion (1.7%) decrease below the FY 2009 comparable estimate. The overview notes that ARRA provides an additional $22.4 billion in FY 2009 and FY 2010 spending for HHS.
Within the HHS total, the budget overview highlights a number of health initiatives, including $6 billion for cancer research at the NIH, “as part of the Administration’s multi-year commitment to double cancer research funding.” The budget overview also “expands research comparing the effectiveness of medical treatments,” to build upon comparative effectiveness research supported through ARRA, though no specific recommendation is included.
