Endocrine  Insider
June 27, 2008

Federal agencies that fund biomedical research may receive additional funds for this fiscal year as a result of the passage of the war supplemental spending bill (HR 2642) in the House of Representatives and Senate.  The primary purpose of the legislation is to fund the Iraq and Afghanistan wars for the rest of the fiscal year, but additional funding was added to support domestic discretionary spending.  The House voted 416-12 to provide the National Institutes of Health (NIH) with an additional $150 million, and the National Science Foundation (NSF), National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science with an additional $62.5 million each. The Senate vote was 92-6. The president has stated that he will sign the bill.

 FY 2009 Appropriations
The Senate Appropriations Committee has approved a Labor-HHS-Education FY2009 bill that provides $30.3 billion for NIH, a $1 billion increase over both FY2008 and the president's FY2009 request.  Though the full House Appropriations Committee has yet to approve its bill, the L-HHS subcommittee has put together a package that allocates $30.4 billion to NIH for FY2009.  The bill is under consideration by the committee, but the appropriations process has been disrupted due to disputes about an unrelated bill, and it is unclear when the differences might be resolved.