The UW is acting in concert with its partners to respond to the ongoing effort to upend the decades-old partnership between universities and the federal government — a partnership that has made the United States healthier, safer and more prosperous.
Category: Federal Budget
Impacts of federal and state policies on the UW
Over the past two months, we have been tracking and responding to a range of policy changes and directives from the federal government while also facing major state budget cuts. Combined they create a perfect storm that we must continue to actively address.
In an uncertain environment, we are working constantly and carefully to protect research
A recent change to National Institutes of Health policy, if enacted, would impose a cap of 15% on indirect costs for NIH-funded research. If implemented, this proposed cap would undermine the critical research infrastructure that has enabled the University of Washington and other research institutions to help the U.S. to maintain its global leadership in scientific innovation.
Federal shut down harms American innovation, prosperity
It is deeply disappointing that a quarter of the federal government has been shut down due to an inability to reach agreement on appropriations for the current budget year. I strongly urge Congress and the administration to find a way forward quickly that enables critical agencies to resume their missions of advancing discovery — and our nation.
Encouraging our lawmakers to reauthorize the HEA
Right now, Congress is considering a number of different bills that would reauthorize the Higher Education Act (HEA). The HEA was first enacted in 1965, and periodically reauthorized, to strengthen our nation’s colleges and universities and expand access to higher education for more Americans. The University of Washington strongly supports the reauthorization of the HEA, which is more vital than ever as more and more of our economy’s best jobs are requiring a four-year credential.
In support of reauthorization, including specific provisions that we believe will best serve the people of Washington and the nation, I have written to the Senate HELP Committee leadership as well as to all of the members of Washington’s Congressional delegation. In my letter, which you can read here, I encouraged our Senators and Representatives to help protect our students, our economy and our future in partnership with higher education.
Update on the final federal tax bill
Today, the U.S. House and Senate passed a tax bill, which, when it becomes law, will dramatically revise our nation’s tax code. The bill does not contain some of the most damaging proposals for higher education that I have written about previously, but it includes some provisions that will make it harder for colleges and universities to provide the teaching and learning that students seek and that our economy demands.
Tax bill provisions hurt students and threaten the economy
These tax bills currently remain very damaging to students, making it harder and more expensive for people to earn the very credentials they need as more and more jobs require post-secondary degrees. This is both bad for students and bad for the economy.
Proposed tax bills would hurt students and economic competitiveness in Washington and the US
This week, the U.S. House of Representatives is expected to consider and pass H.R. 1, the Tax Cut and Jobs Act. A similar bill is working its way through the Senate. Despite some differences between the House and Senate versions, the proposed legislation would significantly increase the UW’s operating costs and reduce incentives for charitable giving, at great cost to students who rely on private philanthropy to access a college education.
Counting the true cost of cuts to research funding
Funding by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has supported countless discoveries that have saved or improved millions of lives, from Dr. Mary-Claire King’s discovery of the BRCA1 breast cancer gene to new, more accurate diagnostic tools for Alzheimer’s disease. As I’ve written before, the President’s budget proposal would dramatically cut NIH’s research funding, slowing progress in understanding and curing diseases that ultimately affect nearly every single American in some form.
This week, I reached out to the U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price and the Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney to share our concerns about the very real ways in which those funding cuts could not merely impede but actually dismantle our nation’s biomedical research and discovery ecosystem, now the envy of the world.
Among the changes proposed in the budget are significant cuts to Facilities and Administration or F&A reimbursements (also known as indirect research costs). While direct costs like researcher pay and lab equipment are the expenses the public most associates with research, F&A costs are real and necessary expenses that are just as integral to research. Like the plumbing and wiring that make a building inhabitable, F&A covers essential infrastructure that a university’s labs and researchers all rely on, like secure computing systems, high-speed data processing and storage, radiation and chemical safety precautions, and personnel costs associated with meeting federal and state regulations related to the safety of human subjects, to name a few. Just as four walls and a roof are not enough to make a house livable, without the infrastructure covered by F&A, universities cannot conduct the kinds of cutting-edge research that results in cures and treatments that save lives.
Even under current law, F&A reimbursements do not cover the full cost of conducting research. The UW is able to make up the difference, effectively subsidizing federal research spending. But if these drastic cuts take effect, it would be impossible to provide the level of support that currently keeps our research efforts moving forward.
The UW and the many people who benefit from our biomedical research would suffer from this budget, and across the country, research universities, especially public institutions, would suffer as well. It would devastate the national biomedical research community and the economy built on research discoveries, leading to a decline in the number of biomedical start-ups based in the U.S. At a minimum, discovery would be slowed, but worse, the loss in momentum nationally to our research breakthroughs would cost many lives that could have been saved.
There is a clear and compelling case for the national interest we all share in federal investment in biomedical research and discovery. I invite and encourage all who care about this issue – and I believe that’s all of us – to raise your voices as well.
New budget would harm nation’s health, economy and security
In March, I wrote about the negative impacts on our nation’s health, economy and security that would result from implementation of the President’s budget outline for the next fiscal year, FY18.
That initial budget outline has now been expanded to a full proposed budget for FY18, which was released today. The cuts to science, health care and other investments in our national prosperity are even more draconian – and more harmful – than those proposed in the original outline.