A subcommittee of the US House of Representatives has proposed keeping the US National Institutes of Health's budget exactly where it is, says ScienceInsider's Jocelyn Kaiser. The committee released a draft of a spending bill with a proposed flat NIH budget of $30.6 billion in 2013 — $100 million less than what a Senate appropriations committee approved in June. The new National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences would also be flat funded at $574 million, which is $64 million less than President Barack Obama had requested for the center, Kaiser says.
However, the bill does propose giving $376 million to the Institutional Development Awards programs, which is $100 million more than it currently receives, she adds. The subcommittee will vote on the bill this week.