The President’s Budget request for HHS proposes $95.4 billion in discretionary budget authority and $1,120 billion in mandatory funding while proposing to shift many mandatory programs to discretionary, including GME. The budget would also consolidate all GME funding into one program while maintaining the site caps. Additionally, the budget proposes to cut or eliminate all public health training funding, including Title VII and Title VIII (Nursing Workforce Development received $83 million, a $145 million cut).
Certain research functions from across the HHS are proposed to be consolidated within NIH and established as three new NIH institutes: the National Institute for Research on Safety and Quality; the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, including the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program; and the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research.
Prior to the two-year budget deal passed by Congress, NIH was slated for a 27 percent cut, but would now receive $35.517 billion.
Overall, NIH fared well considering, highlights include:
- funding via the 21st Century Cures Act;
- funding for three existing agencies elsewhere that the administration is proposing to consolidate within NIH; and
- funding from the HHS-wide initiative for opioids.
The budget does impose a salary cap as to the percentage of investigator salary that can be paid with grant funds and by reducing the limit for salaries paid with grant funds from $187,000 to $152,000 and includes a provision to “cap the percentage of investigator salary that can be paid with grant funds to 90 percent of total salary” for principal investigators funded by NIH. The budget does discuss that the Administration has been prohibited from instituting or investigating an F&A cap by Congress.
HHS Budget in Brief: summarizes NIH proposals on pages 44-50 of the PDF (40-46 of the document)/
Budget Addendum: reflecting changes after the enactment of the Bipartisan Budget Act on Friday