July 19, 2006

Senate Subcommittee Increases HHS Funding; House Bill Still Stalled

The Senate subcommittee on Labor/HHS/Education appropriations approved a $606 billion draft bill yesterday that would provide almost $143 billion in discretionary spending for these domestic programs, a one percent increase over current levels and $5 billion more than the president's budget request. However, funding still falls $7 billion short of FY 2005 levels--$7 billion dollars that the Senate had hoped to recover and overwhelmingly supported through an amendment to the Budget Resolution in March. The full committee will markup the bill Thursday, July 20 at 2 p.m. in room 106 of the Senate Dirksen Office Building .

Meanwhile the House's version of the bill is still awaiting a floor vote, and House Majority Leader John Boehner does not intend to bring the bill to the floor before the August recess.

The Senate generally provides flat funding for agencies that support health services research:

- AHRQ would receive flat funding of nearly $319 million in direct appropriations, including $15 million for comparative effectiveness research. The Coalition requested $440 million for the agency and $60 million for comparative effectiveness research.

- CDC would receive a total of $6.2 billion, of which $31 million is provided for public health research, consistent with the Coalition's recommendation. The Coalition recommended $139 million for NCHS. The "health information and service" line, under which NCHS is included, shows a total of $246 million in appropriated funds; about $20 million more than the House version of the bill. We will know how much NCHS will receive when the report language comes out of committee after Thursday. The House bill provides flat funding of $109 million; the Coalition requested $139 million.

- NIH would receive $28.5 billion. $220 million more than current levels, $250 million more than provided in the bill passed by the House appropriations committee and $200 million more than requested by the president. Assuming the proportion of funds invested in health services research remains consistent at 3.21 percent of total funding, we would see and increase in funding for HSR to $915 million; $7 million over the current estimate. The Coalition recommended a share of $961 million for health services research.

For a copy of the subcommittee's press release visit http://appropriations.senate.gov/hearmarkups/LaborHPRSub07.mht

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