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A key US senator says he will push for considerably more money for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 2000 than the 2.1 per cent increase President Bill Clinton has requested of Congress.

Senator Arlen Specter (Republican, Pennsylvania), chairman of the Senate appropriations subcommittee responsible for approving NIH funding, said last week that he would use as a “guidepost” in drafting next year's spending bill a “professional judgement” budget provided by NIH director Harold Varmus.

Specter said Varmus had told him last month that the NIH could usefully spend an increase of 24 per cent, raising its budget by $3.7 billion to $19.3 billion.

But, when asked by Specter about the figure at a hearing of the subcommittee last week, Varmus emphasized that it was based on a complete lack of constraints — “what we could do under optimal conditions”. It was therefore considerably higher that the sum the NIH actually requested of Clinton's Office of Management and Budget last autumn. That figure was a 10 per cent increase, according to an NIH official.

In the budget he submitted to Congress on 1 February, Clinton requested considerably less than NIH had suggested, asking for an increase of $320 million, or 2.1 per cent (see Nature 397, 377; 377; 1999).

It would be extraordinarily difficult for Congress to land a $3.7 billion increase for NIH, as it is restricted by caps on discretionary spending in a 1997 budget law. These caps would force Congress to raid other agencies in the large spending bill of which NIH is a part in order to provide NIH with any substantial increase.

But, as budget surpluses begin to mount up, the political will to keep the budget caps in place seems to be eroding. Both parties in Congress are looking for ways to undo the caps, possibly creating the opportunity for yet another generous NIH increase.

Apparently pointing in this direction, Specter introduced a resolution in January declaring the Senate's sense that biomedical research spending should be boosted by $2 billion in the coming year.

And John Porter, chair of the House subcommittee that funds NIH, echoed Specter's interest in Varmus's ‘professional judgement’ budget in an interview with Nature last week.

Porter said he intends to keep NIH on course to double its budget over five years. That would require a 15 per cent increase in 2000, like the 15 per cent hike Congress gave the agency in 1999.

Both Specter and Porter are urging Congress to lift the caps.