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House Committee Votes for $5.5B Boost to NIH Budget

NEW YORK — The US House of Representatives Appropriations Committee on Monday approved a roughly $5.5 billion increase in funding for the National Institutes of Health in fiscal 2021, with budget increases for every institute and center.

The committee recommended a total of $46.96 billion in NIH funding for FY 2021, representing a nearly 13 percent increase over its current $41.68 billion budget. Earlier this year, President Donald Trump called for trimming the NIH's FY 2021 budget to $38.37 billion.

Under the bill, the National Cancer Institute would receive $6.91 billion in funding for FY2021 compared to $6.44 billion in the current fiscal year, with $195 million going to support the Cancer Moonshot initiative. The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute would receive $3.89 billion, up from $3.62 billion; the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases would receive $6.39 billion versus its current $5.89 billion; and the National Human Genome Research Institute would receive $650.6 million in FY 2021 funding compared to its current budget of $606.3 million.

The proposed institute budgets include support from a $5 billion emergency fund to help cover shutdown costs, startup costs, and other costs related to delays in research in 2020.

The NIH's BRAIN Initiative would specifically receive $50 million in funding for fiscal 2021 as authorized by the 21st Century Cures Act, while funding for the All of Us Program — launched in 2015 as the Precision Medicine Initiative — would remain flat at $500 million.

The committee also recommended that the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention receives $7.98 billion in FY2021 funding, a 3 percent boost over its current $7.75 billion budget, as well as an additional $9 billion in emergency appropriations.

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