The US National Institutes of Health (NIH) is on its way to receiving its largest funding increase since 2003 thanks to the approval of two draft bills by panels in the House of Representatives and the Senate this week. Although the House panel approved a budget that falls $900 million short of the Senate panel’s $2 billion raise, both bills exceed President Obama’s request to bring the $30.1 billion budget up by 3.3 percent.
“The Senate mark is obviously the best subcommittee action we have seen for NIH in more than 12 years,” Pat White, president of the biomedical research funding lobbyist group ACT for NIH, told Science Insider. “It shows that there is real momentum on a bipartisan basis in the House and the ...