Budget Maneuvers Expected To Reduce NIH Funding Opportunities
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The National Institutes of Health will be able to fund fewer research grants in fiscal 2026, even if Congress provides increased funding for the agency, due to Trump administration budget maneuvers.
The administration’s moves to front-load new grants, while possibly clawing back unspent funds and limiting facility and administration costs, all could suppress the NIH’s opportunities to fund research, according to members of Congress and supporters of the nation’s health research efforts.
These budget maneuvers come in addition to the harsh eye the second Trump administration has cast on the health research agency in its first year, including a proposed 40 percent budget cut for fiscal 2026, which Congress appears unwilling to abide.
“I am puzzled by it,” Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins, R-Maine, said last week when asked about the requested budget cuts for the NIH. “Biomedical research leads to longer, healthier lives for American families, and it also helps us retain our edge in innovation in the world. And why would we want China, for example, to get the jump on new cures or effective treatments?”
The agency’s critics include Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought, who chided the NIH for spending money on “injecting dogs with cocaine” or “blowing lizards off trees with leafblowers.”
But the agency has wide bipartisan support across Congress, as many members laud its investments in lifesaving cures and therapies. On Thursday, Senate Republican appropriators brushed aside the White House’s request for a 40 percent cut; House appropriators are expected to do the same.
The Senate Appropriations Committee’s Labor-Health and Human Services-Education bill proposes $48.7 billion in discretionary funding for the NIH — an increase of $400 million compared to fiscal 2025.
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In the meantime, research institutions are left wondering what’s next — and that’s not helpful in a field that relies on certainty.
Unlike other government-funded projects that can withstand a few months or yearlong pause, medical research cannot stop and start again based on funding without skewing results.
“It’s stultifying,” said Ellie Dehoney, senior vice president of policy and advocacy at Research!America, a health research advocacy group. “Think there’s no question that from the publicly funded to the private sector funded that this uncertainty is killing medical progress.”