Congress Rejects Trump Overhaul of NIH Research Funds
Read the full article in Bloomberg Government
Congressional appropriators pushed back on the Trump administration’s attempted overhaul of how the National Institutes of Health disperses research funding in the Labor-HHS FY26 appropriations bill that was released Tuesday.
Lawmakers included language in the funding bill that limits how much the Trump administration can disperse in the first year of a multi-year grant. NIH grants often disperse funds out year by year.
The Trump administration and Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought wanted to issue more grants that are “forward-funding” or disperse all the grant money in the first year. But the appropriations bill states that the NIH must maintain the status quo and cannot spend a greater dollar amount on forward-funding grants than the agency did in FY25.
“I think if you look at the big picture here, Congress is reasserting its authority when it comes to spending,” said Erik Fatemi, a principal at Cornerstone Government and former Democratic Senate appropriations staffer.
The Trump administration’s OMB had been trying to ramp up how many grants were issued with a lump sum amount in the first year of the grant.
“If you award a lot of money up front instead of spreading it out over multiple years, that means you can award a lot fewer grants,” said Fatemi. By front-loading the funding, “the number of grants you can award goes way down and you can fund fewer new ideas.”
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Eleanor Dehoney, senior vice president for policy and advocacy at the nonprofit health research advocacy group Research!America, said that both of these NIH policy changes show that Congress is pushing back on cuts to scientific research. Trump’s proposed cutting NIH funding by 40%. Appropriators instead gave the agency $48.7 billion, a slight increase from FY25.
“This puts us on a better track forward than what we were looking at when the president’s budget proposal came out,” said Dehoney.
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