Press Releases - Baldwin Calls for More NIH Funding

Baldwin Calls for More NIH Funding

At a full committee meeting of the House Energy and Commerce Committee today to consider reauthorization of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin today called for increased spending on biomedical research and reminded her colleagues of the groundbreaking work in the field being done on the UW-Madison campus.

As the committee took up the bill that would reauthorize NIH funding for three years and increase the current funding level by 5%, Baldwin told the committee: "I think that this committee should make a strong statement regarding the need for increased NIH research funding, and the 5% increase is not it."

Baldwin told her colleagues, "The biomedical and behavioral research that's conducted at or coordinated by the NIH is of great importance to all of America, and especially to my district, which includes the University of Wisconsin-Madison—one of the nation's leading research institutions."

In fact, NIH is the major source of federal funds for biomedical research and the NIH provides more than half of UW-Madison's federal research funding…almost $330 million in 2004.

Baldwin said the bill's 5% funding level increase per year "should be a floor—not a ceiling." Although pleased with improvements made to the bill, Baldwin expressed concerned that this limit is barely enough to keep up with inflation. "I fear that this 5% increase sets a low bar for biomedical research funding at a time when we should be striving for improvements," Baldwin said.

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http://tammybaldwin.house.gov/PRArticle.aspx?NewsID=1354