NEWS

NIH Receives a 14.9% Increase in Fiscal Year 2000

Jane MacDonald Daye

After weeks of negotiations between Congress and the Administration, and after seven temporary spending bills avoided a government shutdown, Congress and the President approved a bill giving the National Institutes of Health $17.9 billion for fiscal year 2000, an increase of $2.3 billion over FY1999. The National Cancer Institute received a proportional increase of $431 million, for a total FY 2000 appropriation of $3.3 billion.

Although the Administration’s FY 2001 budget proposal was not scheduled for release until after the President’s State of the Union address Jan. 27, the White House announced Jan. 16 that the Administration’s FY 2001 budget proposal would include almost $19 billion for biomedical research, an increase of $1 billion over the FY2000 NIH funding level.

With growing broad-based bipartisan support for NIH, funding for biomedical research has more than doubled over the last decade. Whether NIH will see similar substantial increases to those received in the last 2 years depends, in part, on whether Congress holds to current discretionary spending limits, or diverts a portion of the budget surplus to shore up discretionary programs.

Of particular concern to returning members of both houses of Congress are the disparities found when cancer incidence and mortality rates are compared between the general population and minorities, women, and the underserved. Congressional attention is expected to continue on privacy and other patients’ rights issues, long term care, Medicare coverage for prescription drugs, health care access, and coverage for the uninsured, and issues related to access and health coverage for clinical trials.

Open Seats

Two Congressional champions of NIH and NCI, U.S. Rep. John Porter (R-Ill.) and Sen. Connie Mack (R-Fla.), have announced their retirement from Congress at the end of this year. Porter, throughout his Congressional career as a legislator and chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee for Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Programs, has supported and helped make biomedical research become one of Congress’s highest priorities.

Mack has supported biomedical research efforts, especially cancer research, throughout his Senate career. As member of the Senate Labor, HHS, and Education Appropriations Subcommittee, Mack maintained support for increases in NIH funding and, in 1997, introduced a nonbinding Sense of the Senate resolution to double funding for NIH over the next 5 years. This measure passed as an amendment to the FY1998 budget resolution by a vote of 98–0.

Both Porter and Mack believe that although the benefits derived from America’s commitment to medical research have led to vital life-saving medical breakthroughs and improved the quality of life worldwide, there is still much more to learn and much more that can be done to enhance the quality of life for all Americans. In many of his public statements, Mack has affirmed that he is alive today because of the many advances made in cancer research.



             
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