Endocrine Insider
March 21, 2007

Senate Budget Committee Sets Higher Discretionary Spending Limits for FY 2008
The Senate Budget Committee voted along party lines to approve the fiscal 2008 budget resolution on March 15, 2007. Chairman Kent Conrad (D-ND) drafted the resolution that would allow for $18 billion more in domestic discretionary spending in the next fiscal year than President Bush proposed in his budget. Both the President’s budget request and the Senate proposal would balance the nation’s budget by 2012, but the Senate version would allow for $150 billion more in discretionary spending over the next five years than the President’s version.

Conrad assumes that most of the discretionary spending above the President’s request will go toward non-defense domestic programs, including the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, Department of Energy’s Office of Science, and Veterans Affairs medical research. While the Budget Committee may signal its desire for how the additional funding should be allocated, the primary purpose of the budget resolution is to set spending limits that then provide the framework for the individual appropriations subcommittees to allocate funds for each agency. Although the budget resolution does not specify funds for any specific programs, committee staffers suggested that approximately $700 million of the additional $18 billion will likely go towards increasing the NIH budget.

Members of the House are encouraged by this news and have started advocating for additional funding for the NIH. Representative Ed Markey (D-MA) is circulating a “Dear Colleague” letter that urges the House Appropriations Committee to provide the NIH with a 6.7 % increase this year. We encourage you to contact your Representative and urge him or her to sign on to this letter by clicking on “Increase NIH Funding” at the following link: http://capwiz.com/endocrine/home/. Let them know of the need to increase NIH funding by 6.7 percent in FY 2008 in order to bring NIH funding levels back to 2003 levels (with inflation considered). Only by hearing from their constituents will legislators understand the importance of this issue.

When the budget resolution goes to the Senate floor for debate—probably this week—Democrats expect that it will face opposition from Republicans who may try to add amendments that would extend President Bush’s 2001 and 2003 tax cuts and reduce the growth in Medicare and Medicaid spending. The House budget resolution is expected to be discussed in committee this week, and it’s widely anticipated that the House will approve a similar increase for discretionary spending.