Congress Rejects Trump Proposals to Cut Health Research Funds

[Petko21]

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/11/...h-budget-trump.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur

 

[AndyPR]

From the article

Back in March, when President Trump released the first draft of his budget proposal for the coming fiscal year, he asked lawmakers for deep cuts to one of their favorite institutions, the National Institutes of Health — part of a broad reordering of priorities, away from science and social spending, toward defense and border security.
Six months later, Congress has not only rejected the president’s N.I.H. proposal; lawmakers from both parties have joined forces to increase spending on biomedical research — and have bragged about it.

The Senate Appropriations Committee approved a bipartisan bill last week providing $36.1 billion for the health institutes in the fiscal year that starts next month. Senator Roy Blunt, Republican of Missouri and the chairman of the subcommittee responsible for health spending, said it was the third consecutive year in which he had secured a $2 billion increase for the agency, amounting to an increase of about 20 percent over three years.

I think this is an important bit

The appropriations committees in both houses rejected Mr. Trump’s proposal to slash payments to universities for overhead — the “indirect costs” of research financed by the health institutes. These include the cost of utilities, internet service, data storage, the construction and upkeep of laboratories and compliance with federal rules protecting human subjects of clinical research.

In identical language, the House and Senate bills explicitly prohibit the Trump administration from changing the formula used for decades to calculate and pay indirect costs.

“The administration’s proposal would radically change the nature of the federal government’s relationship with the research community, abandoning the government’s long-established responsibility for underwriting much of the nation’s research infrastructure, and jeopardizing biomedical research nationwide,” the Senate Appropriations Committee said in a report on its bill. The proposed cuts, it said, could not be made “without throwing research programs across the country into disarray.”

Given that the system is built on overheads being paid in this way, for them to suddenly stop, as seems to have been the suggested proposal, would have really thrown things up in the air.

 

[*GG*]

From the article


I think this is an important bit

Given that the system is built on overheads being paid in this way, for them to suddenly stop, as seems to have been the suggested proposal, would have really thrown things up in the air.

I hope things change, this system doesn't work for us! So they spend another 2 Billion, and we get $1000 perhaps, I say cut their budgets!

GG

Edit: Wonder what they are getting wrong in this Story, and the Correction will come much later, and most people will not see it. Tired of corrupt media corps that is so 1 sided!