Leaders of the House and Senate appropriations committees on Monday warned the White House not to impose new controls on how the National Institutes of Health awards billions of dollars in research grants.
Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Patty Murray (D-Washington), the Senate panel’s chair and vice chair, and Rep. Rosa DeLauro (Connecticut), the top Democrat on the House panel, said White House officials were threatening to further politicize the federal grant-making process.
The Washington Post first reported Friday that administration officials had discussed an executive order to create a commission that would review NIH grants. Some White House officials were frustrated that the $47 billion health agency had funded projects that they said clashed with President Donald Trump’s agenda.
The White House budget office “should not be involved in agency decisions on the awards of grants,” Collins said in a statement, adding that any attempt “to politicize grant-making at the National Institutes of Health” goes against the intent of Congress.
“NIH funding doesn’t belong to Donald Trump — it belongs to the patients and families waiting on the next medical breakthrough,” Murray added in a statement.
The appropriations leaders and other top lawmakers have previously clashed with the White House over its efforts to place new constraints on NIH funding. Earlier this year, Collins publicly opposed a 15 percent cap on indirect research costs. Last year, Collins and Sen. Katie Boyd Britt (R-Alabama) led a letter signed by a dozen other Senate Republicans urging the White House’s Office of Management and Budget to quickly disburse NIH funds that they said had been delayed.
Russell Vought, the White House’s budget chief, and other officials met with Trump on Friday to discuss the potential executive order, The Post reported. Vought has criticized the NIH for awarding grants that he and other administration officials say fund “woke” initiatives and go against Trump’s executive order barring “equity-related” grants and contracts.
Jay Bhattacharya, the Trump appointee who leads the NIH, which is the nation’s largest single funder of biomedical research, defended the agency’s grant-making process to the president Friday, The Post reported. The NIH quickly moved last year to terminate some grants after Trump took office.
Spokespeople for OMB and the NIH did not immediately return requests for comment Monday on the lawmakers’ statements. Rep. Tom Cole (R-Oklahoma), chair of the House Appropriations Committee, also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Health care advocacy groups, university leaders and other organizations have urged the administration not to pursue the plan.
“Americans want investments in cures and treatments,” said Erika Sward, executive director of United for Cures, a network of patient advocacy groups. “Politically hijacking those kind of advancements is not American, and it’s going to mean that those cures and treatments won’t be there for people across the country.”
OMB has recently moved to assert more control over federal grant-making through a proposed rule that would require political appointees to review grants before they’re awarded to ensure projects advance the president’s priorities.
In their recent government funding measure, congressional appropriators blocked implementation of the rule through December.
Collins defended the NIH’s grant-making process.
“Imposing a political review on awards that have already been selected through a rigorous scientific and merit-based process undermines the long-standing principle that the government funds awards based on scientific need and merit, rather than political ideology,” she said in her statement.
The post Congressional leaders warn White House against adding controls over NIH grants appeared first on Washington Post.
