Strong bipartisan support exists for boosting funding for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), said U.S. Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI), who expressed confidence Congress would fight to restore sharp cuts to the agency’s spending under the Trump administration’s proposed 2018 budget.
Trump’s budget blueprint would reduce NIH spending by $5.8 billion to $25.9 billion, a nearly 20 percent cut.
“Tragically what we saw over the last 10 years was because of sequestration and budget constraints, we actually saw the NIH budget be flat or go down a little bit, which makes it impossible for the NIH to approve multi-year grants for universities and other researchers to find a cure for diseases,” Upton said in an interview with The Ripon Advance.
Upton, who has a long track record of supporting biomedical research, was a major force behind the 21st Century Cures Act, sweeping legislation that provides a way to speed up the discovery, development and delivery of new treatments and cures.
The landmark bill was signed into law in December 2016 and provides $4.8 billion over 10 years for the NIH, part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The law was largely funded through Obamacare and also the sale of crude oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
The Cures Act funding for NIH, which must be reauthorized each year, is mainly earmarked for three innovative initiatives launched by the Obama Administration: the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative, the Precision Medicine Initiative and former Vice President Joe Biden’s Cancer Moonshot.
“You can’t have an up and down line for NIH with the grant requests from researchers,” Upton said. “We’re not going to solve the answer to cancer in one year.”
U.S. Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO) and U.S. Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK), the chairmen of the appropriations subcommittees that oversee NIH and other health and human services, labor and education funding, also have said they do not favor slashing the budget for NIH.
“I’m glad to see that Roy Blunt and Tom Cole, two chairs of the appropriations subcommittees, have spoken out against this and we’re going to do all we can as this process moves forward,” Upton said.
With the current continuing resolution that funds the government expiring on April 28, the appropriations committees will continue to focus on funding the government for the rest of fiscal year 2017 before turning to begin work on passing a budget for 2018.
Upton said when the budget bills for the upcoming year come up for debate, if NIH funding does not reflect an increase in spending, he expects an amendment will be offered to boost that funding. Under House rules, an amendment to boost spending on an appropriations bill must be accompanied by an offset in spending.
“We will look for an offset to make sure that we get an increase in the NIH budget. I’m convinced it will be a bipartisan effort,” he said.
Raising money through the sale of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is one option Upton suggested to fund NIH. “We can begin to sell some of the oil that has been in storage and use those assets for research to combat some of these diseases.”
Despite some disagreements over aspects of the Trump administration’s proposed budget, Upton praised the creation last week of the President’s Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis. Upton, along with U.S. Reps. Tim Murphy (R-PA) and Michael Burgess (R-TX), attended a small meeting with President Donald Trump last week to discuss how to tackle drug abuse.
The new commission created by executive order would study the effectiveness of the federal response to drug addiction and the opioid crisis and make recommendations to the president for improving that response.
“He is very interested in combatting opioid and drug abuse and what could he do to help lead the effort,” Upton said of the meeting with Trump. “He wants to know how he can help and how we can work together, so it was a very productive hour and a half.”