With the US House of Representatives appropriations subcommittee that oversees funding for the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) planning to start drafting the agency's budget bill for the fiscal year beginning October 1, legislators and research advocates predict the new budget is likely to be more difficult to negotiate than usual and will end up falling short of the goals hoped for by the research community.

"This year will be particularly difficult," said Dave Moore, associate vice president for governmental relations at the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC). "It's going to be almost next to impossible for the subcommittees to address all the members' priorities with the allocations they've been given."

The allocation to the Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies, which oversees the NIH budget, reflects an austere allocation to all 13 such committees that is, overall, $2 billion less than that requested by President Bush, according to Appropriations Chairman Rep. Bill Young (R-Fla.). The committee has a discretionary spending ceiling of $142.3 billion, an increase of $3.36 billion (2.4%) over the FY 2004 level and $267 million more than the administration's FY 2005 request.

But the real amount available for NIH and other agencies in the subcommittee's purview will be less, because the spending bill also includes a number of mandatory entitlement programs, including Medicare, Medicaid, and unemployment insurance. The net allocation works out to about $400 million less than that needed to fund the administration's discretionary budget requests, Moore said.

President Bush in February requested $28.6 billion for NIH in FY 2005, a 2.6% increase of $729 million over the current year's funding. Given the anticipated $400 million shortfall, the likelihood of hitting that target is uncertain. "I've not heard anyone suggest that the subcommittee will go below what the president has requested for NIH," Moore told The Scientist. "But the numbers, the arithmetic of the situation, could lead to that outcome."

AAMC, the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB), and other organizations are urging legislators to boost the allocation. "President Bush's budget called for a minute increase in the NIH budget, well below the cost of inflation. The subcommittee is contemplating even smaller numbers, which would have a disastrous effect on progress in medical advancements," FASEB told its membership in a lobbying effort.

In addition to the tight spending limits, other factors promise to challenge the congressional budget-setting process. These include the lack of an agreed-upon budget framework in the Senate and a shortened election-year session. Should the budget process extend into the new year—as happened in the previous 2 years—legislators in a lame-duck session may not want make substantive decisions.

"A lot of people are not expecting to see the [budget] bills enacted before November," said Howard Garrison, FASEB's public affairs director. "But I am moderately encouraged by the fact that we are going to see markups," he told The Scientist. "The process is starting, but I'm not going to hazard a guess" when the budget will be wrapped up, he said.

The House Labor–HHS–Education Appropriations Subcommittee hopes to begin work on its spending bill July 8 and send it to the full appropriations committee the following week, a subcommittee staffer said. The Senate, embroiled in an ongoing procedural dispute, has not passed a FY 2005 spending bill. The Senate Labor–HHS–Education Appropriations Subcommittee had hoped to begin drafting its legislation this week, but according to a subcommittee staffer, the session was cancelled "on orders from on high" and has not been rescheduled.

It seems virtually certain the NIH funding bill will end up in an omnibus spending package to be considered after the elections, especially since Congress has only 4 weeks before recessing for the summer and then another 4 weeks before its October 1 target adjournment date for the year. An NIH budget bill from the House or the Senate before then "could be the starting point for final negotiations," Garrison said.