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February
25, 2003 FY2003 Budget is Law at Last
The drive to double the NIH
budget in five years came to a successful end Feb. 20 when President Bush
signed the FY 2003 $397.4 billion appropriations bill into law after months
of congressional wrangling. The NIH's final FY 2003 budget is $27.2 billion, a $3.8 billion increase over FY 2002. Strong lobbying by the research community (including HABIT readers) boosted the final number, after earlier versions of the appropriations bill in the House and Senate had left the final FY 2003 NIH budget short of the doubling mark. In most cases, final funding for individual NIH institutes was closer to the numbers proposed in the Senate version of the bill, which were higher than those in the House. Health and science fared well across other agencies as well, with the CDC receiving $4.3 billion and NSF receiving $5.3 billion in the final budget. NSF's final numbers were particularly striking, representing an 11.2 percent increase over FY 2002 numbers. Although the news for FY 2003 is mostly good, health research advocates are already worried about the proposed FY 2004 budget, which contains 2 percent to 3 percent increases for NIH and NSF. Organizations like the Ad Hoc Group for Medical Research and Funding, a coalition of research, industry and patient voices, say that the proposed FY 2004 numbers are not enough to maintain the pace of discovery at NIH. Diminished federal research support will "slow the rate at which new methods of prevention, diagnosis and treatment will reach the American people," said Ad Hoc chairman Richard Knapp. The final details of the FY 2003 appropriations can be found on the congressional legislation Web site "Thomas" at http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c108:H.J.RES.2.ENR:
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