2008 NIH budget nearly flat -- again

But the fiscal '08 budget signed into law last month gives a funding boost to community health centers.

By Doug Trapp, AMNews staff. Jan. 21, 2008.

Washington -- For the fifth consecutive year, the National Institutes of Health budget will fail to keep pace with growth in the cost of conducting biomedical research, research groups said.

On Dec. 26, 2007, President Bush signed a $555 billion fiscal 2008 domestic spending package, one week after the House and eight days after the Senate adopted the measure. While the nearly flat NIH budget left research advocates warning that the U.S. edge on biomedical research is eroding, community health centers were thankful for an increase.

The budget measure provides a $133 million, 0.5% increase for the NIH. The figure is adjusted for an earlier bipartisan agreement to transfer $295 million of the institutes' budget to the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria. Biomedical research inflation, however, is expected to remain steady at 3.7% this year, according to the Dept. of Commerce's Bureau of Economic Analysis.

The act includes $65.6 billion in discretionary Dept. of Health and Human Services spending -- about $2.9 billion less than the version Bush vetoed on Nov. 13. Although the president said the appropriations package was more responsible than the earlier spending bills, he said he would have vetoed the measure without its $70 billion in funding for the war on terror.

Bush also chided Congress for including 9,800 special projects, or earmarks, in the legislation at a cost of nearly $10 billion. "These projects are not funded through a merit-based process and provide a vehicle for wasteful government spending," the president said.