Washington

Money tensions on Capitol Hill erupted into farce last week when researchers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) were branded “pigs” by a senior senator during a budget debate.

“The NIH is one of the best agencies in the world,” Senator Pete Domenici (Republican, New Mexico) told colleagues at the 11 March debate. “But they have turned into pigs. You know, pigs! They cannot keep their oinks closed. They send a senator down there to argue as if they are broke.” Observers said that Domenici also used his hand to mime a pig's snout in front of his face and wiggled his fingers. “Will you listen to what has happened to the NIH in five years and tell me that they should get this much money?” he said.

Domenici was responding to Arlen Specter (Republican, Pennsylvania) — one of the NIH's main champions in the Senate — who successfully proposed that the budget resolution for 2005 incorporate a $1.3 billion boost for the NIH. This is $536 million more than President Bush has proposed for the agency. The resolution guides the appropriations subcommittees who determine actual spending levels.

But the proposal outraged Domenici, a strong supporter of physical-sciences research whose home state houses two huge nuclear weapons laboratories, Los Alamos and Sandia. Backers of the physical sciences have become increasingly frustrated in recent years by the failure of other research agencies to attract the kind of increase obtained by the NIH. These feelings had seldom been publicly expressed, however — until Domenici's outburst.

The NIH is one of the few agencies apart from defence and homeland security that could get a big budget increase next year. On 2 February, President Bush proposed that the agency should get $28.6 billion in the 2005 fiscal year, which starts in October, a 2.6% increase on the 2004 budget. But NIH advocates want 8–10%, to help the biomedical research agency sustain the momentum created by the doubling of its budget between 1998 and 2003.