Proposed NIH Budget Cuts Get Blasted by Lawmakers, Researchers

Some top lawmakers and research and patient advocacy groups are frustrated with President Donald Trump’s request to cut back the National Institutes of Health’s budget by $5 billion.

“The request has several shortcomings,” Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee chair, said in a statement released shortly after the administration’s budget release Friday. “For example, the proposal includes unwarranted funding cuts in biomedical research.”

Biomedical research funding has proved to be surprisingly durable even as the administration searches for reductions in government spending, suggesting it has cachet among Republicans even as they decry waste and fraud. The Trump ...