Washington, D.C. -- The National Institutes of Health has won a healthy budget increase for fiscal 1996, thanks to last-minute lobbying by its Republican friends in Congress.
Rep. John E. Porter of Illinois and Rep. Constance A. Morella of Maryland persuaded Republican Congressional leaders to make the N.I.H. one of a handful of federal agencies to get year- long budgets, even though their appropriations bills have not yet been approved. The N.I.H. will receive more than $11.9- billion, a 5.7-per-cent increase over the $11.3-billion it received in fiscal 1995.
Controversial provisions that had stymied negotiations on the N.I.H.'s budget -- including a ban on human-embryo research -- were not included in the legislation that President Clinton signed to get the federal government back to work at least temporarily. But Republican lawmakers say they will reconsider those provisions later this year.
Other agencies that affect colleges, including the National Science Foundation and the Department of Education, did not share the N.I.H.'s good fortune: Lawmakers refused to provide 1996 budgets for them, despite some similar lobbying on behalf of the N.S.F. The temporary legislation reopened those agencies but financed them only through January 26.
Officials at these agencies worry that they will be shut down again if President Clinton and Republican lawmakers do not make considerable progress in budget negotiations by next week’s deadline.
Biomedical-research lobbyists and N.I.H. officials praised Mr. Porter, who heads the House of Representatives’ committee in charge of the N.I.H.'s budget, and Ms. Morella, who represents the district that includes the N.I.H., for championing the agency.
They noted that the money provided by Congressional lawmakers for the N.I.H. exceeded President Clinton’s own request and the recommendation of the Senate Appropriations Committee. Mr. Clinton had sought $11.8-billion for the N.I.H., while the Senate panel had sought $11.6-billion.
Pleased as they were about the budget numbers, however, N.I.H. officials said the agency will need a long time to recover from the federal-government shutdown.
“We are very happy to see the support that the budget reflects, but we are not out of the woods in terms of dealing with the applications, the awards, the reviews,” said Wendy Baldwin, the director of extramural research. “We are back in business, but it will be another six to nine months before we’re back to business as usual.”
Now that the N.I.H. has money, she said, it would first tackle the backlog of grant checks and applications. When the budget impasse began in mid-December, checks for 1,000 multi-year research projects had not been mailed, and another 750 to 1,000 new and renewable awards had not been processed.
The problem escalated as the shutdown continued, because N.I.H. employees were not at work to process about 2,000 awards due to begin February 1.
Some existing research projects and laboratories were put in jeopardy during the budget impasse. For example, the AIDS Clinical Trial Group, which is under way at seven universities, had to stop enrolling patients because the N.I.H. could not provide as much money as had been expected.
Ms. Baldwin said the General Clinical Research Centers, which support 7,000 investigators and 5,000 research projects, were in a similar bind. Only a third of these laboratories had received their first checks for 1996 from the N.I.H. before the December furlough began.
The prospect that lawmakers will reconsider several controversial restrictions still hangs over the agency. The House appropriations bill, approved last summer, barred medical-school accreditors from requiring teaching hospitals to train residents to perform abortions, and included a ban on federally financed research involving human embryos.
“The restrictions don’t apply to this recent provision, but they will eventually be dealt with in negotiations with the Senate,” said one House-committee staffer.
But researchers should assume that Congress eventually will put these restrictions in place, said Jerold Roschwalb, director of federal relations for the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges.
“Congress has used a technical mechanism to get the funds out there, but there is no reason to believe that anybody has changed their minds on issues like abortion,” he said. “As much as we disagreed with them, it would be foolhardy to assume otherwise and get yourself in trouble later.”
The legislation that financed N.I.H. also left unresolved the question of financial support for the Office of AIDS Research. Congress has for the past two years told the N.I.H. how much of its money should be spent on the AIDS office, but the current measure does not.
The temporary spending measure allowed the National Science Foundation to begin spending money again for new grants and other purposes -- at least for a few weeks -- at about the same rate as it did in fiscal 1995.
“We’ll be operating under some semblance of normalcy until January 26th,” said Joel M. Widder, director of the foundation’s division of legislative and public affairs. After that, he said, the foundation did not know what to expect.
David M. Stonner, acting director of Congressional affairs for the foundation, said Rep. Robert S. Walker, the Pennsylvania Republican who chairs the House Science Committee, had asked the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee to finance the foundation for all of fiscal 1996, as Congressional leaders have done for the N.I.H.
By that time, though, other lawmakers had made similar requests for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and other agencies. Rep. Bob Livingston, the Louisiana Republican who chairs the House spending panel, apparently decided not to go “cherry picking” among the agencies.
The N.I.H. benefited because Mr. Porter and Ms. Morella had made their case early, Mr. Stonner said. Besides, he added, the institutes are traditionally “kind of a favored child” of Congress.
Joseph L. Kull, chief financial officer of the N.S.F., said three panels that were to have met this month to review grant proposals had to be canceled during the shutdown. More than 30 large postal bins full of grant applications and other unopened mail awaited N.S.F. employees when they returned to work last week.
Several agencies that support research are secure because the President signed their spending bills into law late last year. They include the Agriculture, Defense, and Energy Departments.
But Congressional Republican leaders do not seem to be in any rush to provide new funds for the Education Department and student loans -- because these programs have been championed by the Clinton Administration and Democratic leaders.
Republican lawmakers last week said they were considering a plan to reward their favorite programs with year-long budgets, while leaving the Administration’s favored programs out in the cold.
“You can’t look at the current environment without worrying how this will be resolved,” said Terry Hartle, vice-president for government relations at the American Council on Education. “The Republicans appear to view our programs as political footballs.”
This story was reported by Stephen Burd, Colleen Cordes, and Paulette V. Walker.