NIH spending at risk in budget battle

Bloomberg: NIH Spending Imperiled By Republicans Ignoring Gingrich Pleas For Science
When House Republicans took power in 1995 determined to cut spending in a battle that shut down the U.S. government, then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich was persuaded to spare the National Institutes of Health. Gingrich not only reconsidered his party's proposed cuts to the NIH budget after hearing concerns from business executives and Nobel laureates, he later supported a bipartisan move to double the research center's funding over five years. For Republicans who took control of the House this year, those concerns aren't resonating, and the NIH lacks a Republican champion. House Republicans are now pressing for a $1.6 billion, or 5.2 percent, spending cut to the center in Bethesda, Maryland, which includes the National Cancer Institute and other medical-research facilities (Dodge, 3/21).

---

This article was reprinted from kaiserhealthnews.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.