NEI Releases FY2020 Congressional Justification

Legislative Update
March 19, 2019

Today, the National Eye Institute (NEI) released its Fiscal Year (FY) 2020 Congressional Justification (CJ), which lays out how the NEI would implement the President's FY2020 budget proposal.

The President's budget, which was released last week, would fund the NEI at $686 million, a cut of $111 million, or 13.9 percent from the FY2019 funding level of $796.5 million. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) would be funded at $34.4 billion, a cut of $4.7 billion, or 12.1 percent, from the FY2019 NIH level of $39.08 billion.

The CJ details that the NEI would fund 854 Noncompeting research projects, a reduction of 24 awards from FY2019. The number of renewed competing grants would be cut from 97 to 65, and the number of new competing grants would be cut from 218 to 145.

Congress has yet to release its FY2020 budget, although the individual House and Senate Appropriations subcommittees have begun scheduling Public Witness hearings in preparation for drafting their respective bills. NAEVR has submitted a request to testify at the April 9 House Labor, Health and Human Services (LHHS) Appropriations Subcommittee hearing and will also submit public testimony for the record for both the House and Senate Subcommittees.