Fiscal Year 2009 Appropriations Update

Capitol Hill Update - August 2008

August 1, 2008

After clearing the FY 2009 Budget resolution in June, the House and Senate Appropriations Committees immediately began mark up of the FY 2009 appropriations bills. Both chambers' proposed Labor-Health and Human Services-Education (L-HHS-Ed) bills provide the NIH with its largest funding increase in six years.

Democratic members criticized the Bush Administration's continued flat-funding for medical research. Senate Labor, Health and Human Services and Education Subcommittee Chair Tom Harkin (D-IA) said a FY 2009 increase was necessary to keep pace with biomedical inflation and to retain promising researchers at the NIH.

House Appropriations Chair Dave Obey (D-WI) noted that the administration's freeze of NIH funding in past years attributed to the loss of over 6,000 researchers. He also noted that the proposed increase would allow more than 1,041 new research grants to be funded.

On June 26, 2008, the Senate Appropriations Committee passed its FY 2009 L-HHS-Ed bill with an increase of $1.025 billion for the NIH above the flat-funded $28.9 billion proposed by the White House. This increase would bring the total NIH budget to more than $30.2 billion. The House L-HHS-Ed bill is slightly larger than the Senate's, proposing a $1.2 billion increase for the NIH from FY 2008 funding, for a total of $30.4 billion for FY 2009.

Neither the House nor Senate Appropriations Committees have marked up their proposals on the Defense Appropriations bill. Chairman Obey cancelled their full committee mark up of the Defense spending bill for July 23, 2008, but has since said he plans to mark up the Defense measure the first week of September. Senate appropriators decided to postpone their full committee mark up scheduled for July 24, 2008 due to delays in the House.