Dire Consequences of NIH Cuts

I'm pretty sure the new House majority will succeed in enacting pretty severe cuts to means-tested programs that benefit poor people. But any talk of sweeping budget cuts is going to keep running into stories like this one:

Republicans taking control of the House next year would roll back funding to agencies, including NIH, to fiscal 2008 levels, according to a proposal by Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.), who is likely to become the chamber's majority leader. That would equate to a 4.3 percent, or $1.3 billion, cut to the agency's $30.8 billion annual budget.

The reduction would be "very devastating" and would demoralize scientists, whose odds of winning a research grant from the agency could drop to about 10 percent, NIH Director Francis Collins said in an interview. Fewer than one in five grant proposals are successful, he said.

NIH-funded research led to the development of drugs that include the cancer therapies Avastin, sold by Roche Holding AG, and Novartis AG's Gleevec, said Jennifer Zeitzer, lobbyist for the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology in Bethesda.

Already the talk of focusing on domestic discretionary spending means the GOP will exempt Medicare, Medicaid, the Pentagon, and farm subsidies from the budget ax. So are they really going to cut the NIH? Federal law enforcement programs? The upshot is going to be really bad news for Pell Grants and a handful of other programs that lack constituencies Eric Cantor cares about.