The latest proposal for the 2008 budget for the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention gives the agencies a slight bump over last year's levels. Over the weekend, Congress prepared a new version of appropriations following President George Bush's veto of previous bill in November. This new bill includes $760 million less for NIH and $240 million less for CDC than the vetoed bill, according to news reports today.

The result is an increase of less than 1% ($130 million) for the NIH from an FY07 budget of roughly $29 billion, says Nancy Granese, the executive director of the Campaign for Medical Research. (CMR is a lobbying group that represents Research!America. The Scientist's founder Eugene Garfield sits on Research!America's board.). "We're not going to be getting the 6.7% increase the research community had hoped for," Granese told The Scientist. "We're extremely disappointed."

Karl Moeller, the executive director of the Campaign for Public Health, another lobbying group for Research!America, is not as disappointed in the bill, at least as far as CDC funding goes. The bill gives the agency a 2.8% boost from FY07 levels. And while that's not the 6.6% increase that was in the bill Congress passed originally, it's a "huge increase over the president's budget request from February of this year," Moeller told The Scientist.

Congress will take a few more steps before the bill is sent for the president's approval, and Granese said she expects a final version later this week. She said she expects that the bill will pass Congress, although anti-war Democrats and Republicans opposed to earmarks in the bill could vote against it.