WASHINGTON _ When Congress returns from its IndependenceDay recess Monday, it will begin consideration of legislation that willset funding levels for biomedical research at the National Institutes ofHealth for fiscal 1996, which starts Oct. 1.

Members of the House and Senate Appropriations Committee will beguided by the budget resolution approved by Congress in late June,which cuts deeply into many federal health programs, but leaves NIHlargely unscathed.

NIH benefited from having friends in high places. SenateAppropriations Committee Chairman Mark Hatfield (R-Ore.) andHouse Labor-Health and Human Services (HHS) AppropriationsSubcommittee Chairman John Porter (R-Ill.) supported higherfunding levels for NIH when the budget resolutions were beingdebated in Congress earlier this summer.

The compromise budget resolution trims the $11.3 billion NIHbudget sought by the Clinton administration by 1 percent in fiscal1996 and 3 percent in each of the following six fiscal years.

An earlier House-passed budget plan would have reduced NIHfunding by 5 percent in fiscal 1996 and would have frozen it throughfiscal 2002. The Senate's original version, showing Hatfield's effortsto restore some NIH funding, would have cut the NIH budget by 1percent annually for the next seven fiscal years.

In the House, Porter cut several education programs within theLabor-HHS budget to make room for some restoration of NIHfunding.

Hatfield and Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) will press their case thismonth for maintaining the federal government's commitment tobiomedical research when they introduce legislation that wouldinsulate the NIH from the political winds of the annual appropriationsprocess. The legislation would slap a tax of 25 cents per pack oncigarettes _ much like one under consideration during the 1994health care reform debate _ that would be set aside for biomedicalresearch. The cigarette tax receipts would be deposited in NIH'sNational Foundation for Biomedical Research. n

-- Michele L. Robinson Washington Editor

(c) 1997 American Health Consultants. All rights reserved.