New federal budget brings an end to NIH growth spurt

Another budget provision cuts primary care training grants, but community health center funding continues to grow.

By Joel B. Finkelstein, AMNews staff. Feb. 9, 2004.

Washington -- Congress has passed a federal budget for this fiscal year that abandons the dramatic growth in funding that the National Institutes of Health had experienced over the past five years.

After several procedural delays, the Senate signed off on an $820 billion omnibus budget package for the 11 departments that had been operating on continuing resolutions since last October, when fiscal year 2004 started.

The NIH will receive about $1 billion more in 2004 than it did in 2003. Whether it is an adequate increase, or even if it amounts to an increase, depends on who is asked.

According to the Bush administration, the final budget raises NIH research funding by 7% over 2003 levels. That calculation excludes last year's one-time cost of building infrastructure for new bioterrorism facilities.

But taking that bioterrorism money out of the fiscal year 2003 budget would mean that Congress didn't really meet the goal of doubling NIH's budget over five years.

"You can't really say, 'The NIH budget doubled over five years, oh, but by the way, we got a 7% increase this year because some of the money we spent last year didn't really go toward research,' " said David Moore, associate vice president of government relations for the Assn. of American Medical Colleges. "You can't count it both ways."

The AAMC estimates that once all factors are taken into account, the new NIH budget will be about 3.1% more than it was last year.