Congress Could Move on NIH Reauthorization Before Recessing

The House of Representatives is moving rapidly to pass legislation to reauthorize and revamp the NIH before the end of the congressional session.

Major provisions of the National Institutes of Health Reform Act of 2006 include a 5 percent increase in funding for the next three years and the establishment of a “common fund” to support research that crosses institutional boundaries. Those new funds may be used for grants designed to facilitate the translation of new findings from bench to bedside. Such research can help leverage NIH spending by bringing the products of research to the practice of medicine sooner.

The Academy has urged lawmakers to give such translational research a higher profile in the legislation by, among other things, including primary care physicians in a review board that would be responsible for approving studies paid for through the common fund.

Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, vowed to push hard for passage of the legislation in the remaining days before this Congress recesses for the November elections. Barton is chairman of the influential Energy and Commerce Committee, which passed the legislation on Wednesday after voting down several amendments from Democrats. Although the reauthorization bill has only a three-year life span, it has been 13 years since the last such measure was passed.

Rapid passage of the bill potentially represents one of the few opportunities lawmakers have to do the “right thing for the right reason,” Barton said at a Sept. 19 hearing on the legislation. The reauthorization measure would reaffirm the importance of the NIH in supporting medical research while imposing new accountability on the agency, he added.

The legislation would request that congressional appropriators boost the NIH budget by 5 percent a year for 2007 through 2009. For at least the first two years, half of that increase is slated to pay for the common fund, which initially tops out at 5 percent of the total NIH budget.

“What the common fund will do is allow NIH to be responsive to new areas of science, things that are unproven, things that institutes on their own cannot do,” NIH Director Elias Zerhouni, M.D., testified at the Sept. 19 hearing.

However, Democrats on the committee complained that the amount of new money the legislation asks for is too small. “Even if the 5 percent is fully appropriated, with half reserved for the common fund, there will not be enough to cover inflation,” said Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif.