About 100 university scientists and their advocates gathered here on Tuesday as part of an annual ritual to convince lawmakers of the value of federal spending on medical research.
And this year, with the sales job perhaps as tough as any, they got some extra inside help.
Along with the usual chorus on the political left, a few of Capitol Hill’s most conservative voices also have begun pressing for increased federal spending on biomedical research, raising at least a glimmer of hope that a decade of declines in budgetary support might finally be nearing an end.
The advocates include Rep. Kevin Yoder of Kansas, Rep. Matt Salmon of Arizona, and the former House majority leader Eric Cantor of Virginia, all Republicans with voting records rated as 85 percent or higher by the American Conservative Union.
Mr. Yoder, whose district includes the University of Kansas’ medical campus at Kansas City, is one of the most enthusiastic and outspoken. He suggested recently that the $30-billion budget of the National Institutes of Health be doubled to $60 billion — something not even the NIH’s director, Francis S. Collins, has been willing to broach.
It’s a matter, Mr. Yoder said in an interview on Tuesday, of “a reprioritization of what our most critical investments should be for the future.”
Mr. Salmon, of Arizona, has advocated a $40-billion NIH budget.
Mr. Cantor, who moved to an investment bank after losing a re-election bid, recently proposed to The Huffington Post that his former colleagues accept greater spending on biomedical research to get increases at the Pentagon.
The head of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, which organized the annual lobby day on Tuesday, said the support was welcome even if he could not be too confident about what it might ultimately mean.
“I would love to take it very seriously,” said Joseph R. Haywood, who is assistant vice president for regulatory affairs at Michigan State University and is now serving as president of Faseb, a lobby group representing about 120,000 medical researchers worldwide.
The federation regularly urges its member scientists to invite lawmakers to visit their labs. Legislative visitors often get caught up in the excitement of the research, said Mr. Haywood, who is also a professor of pharmacology and toxicology at Michigan State. “It’s what we see all the time,” he said.
But that often doesn’t translate into votes when it comes time for lawmakers to make tough budgetary decisions back in Washington, Mr. Haywood said. Then, he said, “all the other realities that they have to deal with come into play.”
In that regard, the firm commitment by a conservative such as Mr. Yoder is unique. The Kansas Republican was student-body president at the University of Kansas, where he studied English and political science. His Congressional district includes or is near the medical center in Kansas City, the flagship in Lawrence, and the Edwards campus in Overland Park.
As such, Mr. Yoder has a strong appreciation of the economic importance of the university system to its region, said Timothy C. Caboni, vice chancellor for public affairs at the University of Kansas.
And the university, for its part, has worked hard to maintain and build that relationship, Mr. Caboni said. Its key strategies include being sure to respond quickly to any queries that might come from a Congressional office, and to characterize the value of the university in ways that fit each lawmaker’s particular priorities. For Mr. Yoder, Mr. Caboni said, that clearly means an emphasis on economics.
The idea is to “have the conversation on their terms, not on our terms,” Mr. Caboni said.
Mr. Yoder, in turn, hopes to spread his belief in the economic value of the NIH to his philosophical allies in Congress. “I’m making the case on conservative terms for why this is and should be a conservative issue, and hopefully we can rally some support around that,” he said.
He acknowledged, however, that it would be a tough sell, given the limitation of the Budget Control Act of 2011 and the automatic cuts it introduced under a process known as sequestration. President Obama, in the budget he proposed back in February for the 2016 fiscal year, suggested an NIH budget of $31.3 billion, an increase of about $1 billion over the agency’s current level. So far, the Republican leaders of both the House and the Senate have shown limited, if any, interest in matching such numbers.
“It’s going to take many voices to move in unison to try to create some momentum behind this,” Mr. Yoder said. But, he admitted, “we are probably farther away from building consensus around this than I’d like to be.”
The NIH and other federal science agencies have enjoyed Republican support in the past, though often it can be traced to lawmakers with a specific interest. Along with Mr. Yoder’s affiliation with the University of Kansas, both Mr. Salmon and Mr. Cantor hail from states with major medical research universities. Another prominent conservative backer of federal spending on science, Rep. Randy Hultgren of Illinois, has the Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in his home district.
“It could theoretically be harder for a member of Congress that doesn’t see the research firsthand and doesn’t see the impact as clearly,” Mr. Yoder conceded.
Paul Basken covers university research and its intersection with government policy. He can be found on Twitter @pbasken, or reached by email at paul.basken@chronicle.com.
