[Faculty] FY17 Federal Budget Update

[Pawar, Sangita C - (sangita)]

>From the Associate Dean for Research Parker Antin, PhD


FY17 FEDERAL BUDGET UPATE

With the high level of confusion in Washington surrounding a variety topics including the federal budget, I want to give you an update regarding the status of FY17 budget appropriations. This information is up to date as of this morning.

Presently the federal government is operating under a Continuing Resolution (CR) for the FY17 discretionary budget, which puts the FY17 budget (which began Oct. 1, 2016) for all federal agencies at their FY16 levels.  The CR expires on April 28. Congressional appropriations staff have assembled an omnibus FY17 appropriations bill covering 11 federal agencies that is highly similar to the bills put together last fall. It include a $2B increase for NIH  and essentially flat funding for NSF, the USDA and parts of other agencies that relate to research.  Appropriators have ignored recent requests from the Trump administration for deep cuts to the FY17 discretionary budget to fund increases in the military. The omnibus bill has strong Republican support and it seems likely that the Democrats will also support it.

Congress hopes to end this bill to the President's desk a day or two before the present FY17 continuing resolution (CR) ends on April 28.  Since the bill does not include the cuts requested by Trump, it's possible that he will veto it. If that happens, the House could try to override the veto, patch together a last minute CR, or shut down the government.  It's not clear that there would be enough votes to override a veto, though Trump might decide to sign the legislation so that he can focus on deep cuts to the FY18 budget.

Over the past couple of days, HHS Secretary Tom Price presented a plan to a fund $6B cut to the NIH budget by eliminating Indirect Cost Recovery (ICR, aka IDC), his rationale being that this is just "extra" money that is not really spent on research costs. The ignorance of his position with regard to ICR is remarkable, and there has been swift and vigorous push back on this proposal from many quarters.  It's probable that  this will not influence the FY17 budget, but there is concern that the general discussion could elicit an examination of ICR and perhaps evolve to an across the board cut to ICR in FY18.  Even a 2% reduction in ICR would be highly damaging. It would also create a precedent for using ICR cuts as federal budget management tool, essentially transferring federal budget cuts or re allocations to Universities and research Institutions across the country.  If this discussion progresses, you can expect a huge fight.

Best regards,

Parker


Parker B. Antin,  Ph.D.
Associate Dean for Research
    College of Agriculture and Life Sciences
Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine
    College of Medicine
University of Arizona  Tucson, Arizona USA
Tel:  (520) 626-6382

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