Guest Post By: Mary Woolley, President and CEO, Research!America
Each year, Congress develops a federal budget, which establishes funding for each federal department and agency for the following fiscal year. This determines how much funding agencies like the NIH have to support scientific research through grants, as well as in their own labs.
Budget Caps Threaten Research Funding
A federal law, the 2011 Budget Control Act (BCA), placed stifling caps on spending that have threatened funding for the NIH and other agencies. These caps are blunt tools that batter crucial national priorities, compromising security, prosperity, and progress.
Why It’s Time to #RaisetheCaps
Because the caps established by the BCA are so low, Congress has raised them repeatedly to allow sufficient funding for federal agencies. Unfortunately, those “caps deals” were temporary. Unless Congress acts again, we’re looking at a cut of approximately $55 billion to non-defense discretionary spending in the next fiscal year, which guarantees trouble. If the cuts are distributed evenly or no budget deal is reached, then NIH and every other public health and science agency faces a cut of about 10%. In the case of NIH, that would mean a cut of as much as $4 billion.
Achieving another agreement to raise the budget caps is crucial, time-sensitive, and not by any means a sure thing.
You don’t need a laundry list of the negative consequences on science that these cuts would engender. Suffice it to say that promising research will be choked off, fewer new grants will be funded, and medical and other scientific progress will slow dramatically. All this during a time of unprecedented scientific opportunity, when other nations are already nipping at our heels and would surely attract more and more young scientists if the U.S. signaled lack of support. Starving research is not the solution to what ails us — literally or economically.
Your voices, your story, and your expertise are needed now. Tell your friends, colleagues, and Congressional representatives why medical progress, public health progress, and science itself are crucial, and why federal funding for these priorities is so important.
Research!America, supported by partner organizations including ASHG, has created resources for you to advocate for federal research funding. Additional resources and tools to urge your representatives to #RaisetheCaps are available on ASHG’s Advocacy Center.