Biden’s latest budget gets a mixed reaction from the science community | News

President Biden’s fiscal year 2024 budget proposal is met with mixed reactions in the scientific and academic research communities. The new White House proposal would give the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) a marginal, sub-inflationary increase of less than 2%, and it would offer about the same for federally funded basic research. But other agencies like the National Science Foundation (NSF) would fare much better.

“The NIH will not be able to sustain funding for scientific research,” warns the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology’s director of public affairs, Sarina Neote. “This means the agency will be forced to keep good science on the table; leading to fewer medical advances, breakthrough studies, fewer trained scientists, and an overall negative impact on the research ecosystem,” she says world of chemistry.

Neote points out that the Biden government is proposing $48 billion (£40 billion) for the NIH’s base budget, excluding Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) funding and an additional $2.5 billion Dollars in funding for pandemic preparedness. “The proposed total budget for NIH is $51.1 billion, but the baseline budget would only increase by 1.7%. If that number doesn’t increase, it would be detrimental to scientific research across the country,” she adds.

Jennifer Zeitzer, spokeswoman for the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, also fears that funding for basic research would increase by only about 2%. The inflation index for biomedical research is around 3%. So if Congress approves Biden’s motion, the NIH “will have to make some tough decisions about how to fund the research [fiscal year] 2024 and will almost certainly have less capacity to support research funding, especially after the generous increases Congress has provided over the past three to five years,” warns Zeitzer.

Joanne Padrón Carney, chief government relations officer at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, agrees that the basic research budget Biden is proposing is disappointing, especially given inflation, but stresses that the government’s proposal requires significant investment in certain priority areas. including the NSF.

The NSF is expected to receive $11.3 billion, a hefty increase from current levels. The White House puts the proposed NSF increase at around 18%, but some science groups estimate it’s closer to 14%. Specifically, the proposal provides $1.2 billion for a new NSF division to accelerate scientific research and translate it into innovation, industries and jobs.

Just a starting point

The Department of Energy’s Science Office (DOE) would see an 8.6% increase, and the proposal specifically supports funding of cutting-edge research in artificial intelligence, quantum information science, microelectronics and isotope production in national laboratories and universities.

At the same time, as part of the President’s proposal for the NIH, there is an increase from $1 billion for ARPA-H to a total of $2.5 billion. This agency was founded just last year to advance innovative health research.

At the NIH, the administration’s budget would also provide $7.8 billion for Cancer Moonshot-related activities at the agency’s National Cancer Institute. This initiative, originally launched by the Obama administration seven years ago and led by then-Vice President Biden, aims to reduce the US cancer death rate by at least 50% over the next 25 years.

But Zeitner warns that most budgets are dead on Capitol Hill, regardless of the political party occupying the White House. “The important point to remember about the president’s budget request is that this is the beginning of budget talks, not the end,” she notes. It is Congress that ultimately decides how much money to allocate to research agencies.

“We continue to hope that Congress will continue bipartisan support for federal research agencies, but I think it’s going to be a difficult year overall for the regular appropriation process,” said Sarah Spreitzer, Associate Vice President and Chief of Staff for the American Council on Education Government Relations , and referred to the larger total government spending negotiations currently taking place between Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill.

With Republicans controlling the House and Democrats controlling the Senate, there is an extreme level of partisanship that could complicate and delay signing the measure.

There are also concerns over whether there will even be agreement in Congress on the amount of money to be allocated for non-defense discretionary spending, including funding for research agencies. In many cases, Biden’s budget requests for these agencies in 2024 likely represent the “high water mark,” Spreitzer suggests.

But for the most part, science agencies are not viewed in a partisan light. “I think members of Congress understand the importance of our US universities doing research and development to address national challenges,” Spreitzer says. But she and others note that the arguments on Capitol Hill are related to Republicans’ desire to cut government spending.