January 20, 2022
On January 20, 2022, UMR wrote to Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies (“Labor-HHS”) Chairs, Sen. Patty Murray and Rep. Rosa DeLauro, and Ranking Members, Sen. Roy Blunt and Rep. Tom Cole, urging for an increase of at least a $3 billion to the base budget of the National Institutes of Health within the fiscal year 2022 omnibus appropriations bill.
The letter states:
“While strong investments in NIH by Congress over the past several years helped generate great success with COVID-19 vaccines, the pandemic has caused major disruptions within the research community. In fact, at a Senate Labor-HHS Appropriations Subcommittee hearing last year, NIH Director Francis Collins said, “We’re going to have a really big challenge getting ourselves back into the place we were before this happened.”
This challenge is why passing fiscal year 2022 Labor-HHS appropriations for NIH is so critical for our country. A continuing resolution for the remainder of the fiscal year would set back America’s biomedical research – and its researchers – too far. It would jeopardize promising research on some of our most deadly diseases, such as cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer’s and ALS, as well as essential research on child health and development.