Washington

While the United States enters December without having elected a president, biomedical researchers face an even more pressing problem. Thanks to gridlock in Washington, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) still has no budget for the 2001 financial year, which began on 1 October.

Congress returns this week for a session that was expected to agree on the appropriations bill that funds the NIH. The bill was expected to include a massive 15% increase, taking the agency's budget to $20 billion. But with Congress disinclined to pass a version that outgoing president Bill Clinton would sign, it is anyone's guess when the NIH will get the money.

As the first grants for the 2001 fiscal year go out this week, the uncertainty is starting to hit home, says Wendy Baldwin, the NIH's deputy director of extramural research. “Not as many people will get money, and those that will won't get as much.”

Even if the NIH gets its 15% increase, there is no guarantee that the money will be backdated to October. If the electoral impasse leaves the NIH with a smaller increase than had been expected, it would dampen the agency's chances of doubling its budget over a five-year period — the full 15% would take the NIH halfway there.

Biomedical research lobbyists are unsure how or when the impasse will end. At worst, the government might maintain the 2000 levels into 2001, and then decide that the agency could not manage a year's worth of budget hikes in a shortened period.

→ http://grants.nih.gov/grants/news.htm