Senate appropriators decry deep potential cuts to NIH budget

Bipartisan members of the Senate Appropriations Committee expressed concern about potential cuts to federal biomedical research funding and their support for stable funding at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) at their first full committee meeting of the year on 30 April.

“I am so deeply alarmed that President Trump has taken a wrecking ball to our biomedical research enterprise,” said Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), the committee’s ranking minority member.

According to Murray, the Trump administration is purported to seek to cut $21 billion from the NIH budget for FY 2026. “That would be a 44% cut, the biggest cut in NIH history,” she said, noting that the cut would be in addition to the previously announced elimination of 800 grants, or over $1.1 billion in funding for essential research and trials.

Committee Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) also lamented the cuts. “There is no investment that pays no greater dividends to American families than our investment in this research…. For more than 75 years, the United States has been the world leader in scientific research and technological innovations,” Collins said. “Over the past 20 years, the FDA has approved more than 600 new cancer treatments, including standard chemotherapy, targeted therapies, and immune therapies, all made possible by decades of the National Cancer Institute's investment in basic research."

Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) said, “Over the first 100 days of the Trump Administration, there has been a direct attack on NIH and medical research. This puts more Americans in harm’s way and less research into lifesaving treatments and cures. Of course, at the global level, it opens the doors to our adversaries, like China, who emulate the US model. What we are witnessing is a danger to all of us.”

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) recalled his bipartisan efforts to secure annual funding increases for medical research at NIH. He recalled meeting with Francis Collins, then-director of NIH. During their conversation, he inquired about what Congress could do to support the NIH's work. Collins explained that sustaining NIH’s efforts would require a 5% increase in the budget each year.

Following that meeting with Francis Collins, Durbin worked with Murray and former Sens. Roy Blunt (R-MO) and Lamar Alexander (R-TN) to support funding increases for NIH. Durbin said that since FY 2015, Congress increased the NIH budget appropriation from $30 billion in FY15 to $49 billion in FY 2025.

Durbin said that, if enacted, the deep cuts to medical research funding at NIH outlined in a leaked Trump Administration budget document, it would “wipe out” these gains. “One decade of work, bipartisan work, to increase medical research across the United States. That’s what’s at stake here,” Durbin said.

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) stressed the importance of partnerships between the academic community and companies to attract biomedical investment. She said that New Hampshire has developed a robust biomedical industry thanks to strong partnerships between small companies and local universities, including Dartmouth College and the University of New Hampshire.

Shaheen asked witness E. Cartier Esham, executive director of the Alliance for a Stronger FDA, for her thoughts on what would be necessary to attract private investment in the development of new drugs.

The US biomedical industry needs stable FDA funding to attract biomedical investment, Esham responded. Companies need to know that FDA will have the resources it needs to make quick and timely decisions on applications.

“In the biomedical research ecosystem, you have foundational research. This leads to understanding new targets, new endpoints, and new ways to look at diseases and new ways to think about patient-driven medicine,” she said. “Then that information and that knowledge is transferred to a clinical trial system where the biopharmaceutical companies, and a lot of them are the small companies, like the ones you see in your state, they are taking that knowledge and doing cutting-edge research. They are on the edge of discovery for next-generation medical interventions.”

Esham added, “What [companies] need is the ability to understand the regulatory agency's capability and whether it can evaluate safety and efficacy for these medicines, and they need to understand that the agency can move things forward in an orderly manner.”

She added that timely responses to submissions are crucial for the biomedical industry. “If [an answer to an application] is no, a timely no is better than a prolonged and longer period” before an application is denied. “This has a profound impact on the investment community. …The stronger we are, the more we can keep building biomedical hubs in your state.”

Senate appropriators decry deep potential cuts to NIH budget

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