President Issues FY2013 Budget That Flat-Funds NIH, Reduces NEI Funding
Legislative Update
February 13, 2012
Today, President Obama released a proposed $3.8 trillion Fiscal Year (FY) 2013 federal budget that would flat-fund the National Institutes of Health (NIH) at the programmatic level of $30.7 billion. NIH will implement new grants management policies to increase the number of new research grants awarded (stated to be seven percent by the Office of Management and Budget, OMB) and continue to focus on resources for new investigators.
The proposed NIH budget sets salaries charged on grants to Executive Level II, which is the same level as in FY2012. The new National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) has a budget increase to $639 million from $576.5 million, which includes $50 million for the Cures Acceleration Network (CAN), up from the $10 million in the FY2012 budget. Overall, funding for many of the Institutes and Centers (I/Cs) appears to be down slightly due to funding of centralized programs.
The budget proposes National Eye Institute (NEI) funding at $693.015 million, a decrease of $8.861 million or 1.2 percent. In its Congressional Justification (CJ), NEI notes that the Research Project Grants (RPG) category will increase by $3.128 million, while Cooperative Clinical Research will decrease by $8 million [since the NIH Office of AIDS Research will no longer fund cytomegalovirus (CMV) retinitis research at NEI], Research Training will decrease by $1 million, and Research and Development Contracts will decrease by $1.36 million.
In FY2012, the NIH and NEI had a 0.81 percent and 0.27 percent funding increase, respectively, which reflected the net of a 0.189 rescission to the appropriated funding level. The FY2012 increase came after a one percent decrease in NIH and NEI funding in FY2011.
NAEVR will advocate with Congress for an increase in FY2013 NIH and NEI funding.
