Congress Compels the Trump Administration to Spend Science and Health Funding
Read the full article in The Lancet
A budget battle between US Congress and the White House has ended with a rare rebuke. A bipartisan majority in Congress rejected the Trump Administration’s request to cut the 2026 budget of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) by 40% compared with last year, and to slash nearly 50% from the budget of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)—both agencies are part of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). President Donald Trump signed the budget legislation into law on Feb 3. However, the relief of many research scientists and their supporters has given way to a new concern: can the Administration be trusted to spend funds as Congress intended—especially money it did not request for programmes it did not want?
“We are very thankful for what Congress did for science”, said Walter Leal, a distinguished Professor of Biochemistry at the University of California, Davis. Last year, Leal helped organise a letter to Congress from 80 Nobel Laureates and more than 3200 other members of the National Academy of Sciences. They warned that the Trump Administration’s budget cuts could increase “the risks of economic declines, weakened US competitiveness, disruption of our educational system, loss of scientific talent, and threats to public health and national security.”
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Despite the law’s bipartisan congressional support, Leal and others are not confident that it can prevent future reductions in the science and health enterprise. “There are so many things that can go wrong”, he said.
“Like all advocates, we need to stay vigilant to ensure that staff shortages, vacancies in the advisory councils that review grants, and other factors don’t delay or derail the grant-making process,” said Eleanor Dehoney, Senior Vice President, Policy and Advocacy at Research!America, an alliance of research institutes, medical centres, scientific societies, and patient advocacy groups. “This new funding measure is not a panacea; it’s a step forward. People are suffering needlessly from diseases we can overcome. We should be running, not stumbling, toward solutions.”
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