Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala.) and 13 other Senate Republicans are urging the Trump administration to release National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding that has been held up for months.
The GOP senators warned in a letter to White House budget chief Russell Vought that the “slow disbursement of funds” that Congress appropriated in March “risks undermining critical research and the thousands of American jobs it supports.”
“Suspension of these appropriated funds — whether formally withheld or functionally delayed — could threaten Americans’ ability to access better treatments and limit our nation’s leadership in biomedical science,” the senators warned.
“It also risks inadvertently severing ongoing NIH-funded research prior to actionable results,” they wrote.
The Trump administration suspended or cut many NIH research grants earlier this year to undertake a thorough review to ensure they complied with Trump’s orders to end federal support for diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs.
A database set up by a Harvard University researcher estimated that by the end of May, more than 2,100 NIH grants worth more than $9 billion had been canceled.
NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya told senators in March at his confirmation hearing that his agency would restart grant reviews, but an analysis by STAT, a health care news site, last month found that NIH had made little progress in narrowing the funding gap created by the freeze on grant approvals.
Now, Republican senators are trying to ramp up pressure on the Office of Management and Budget.
They told Vought they share his commitment to ensuring NIH funds are “used responsibly and not diverted to ideological or unaccountable programs.”
But they also argued that starving the NIH of funding could inadvertently undermine trust in the agency.
“Withholding or suspending these funds would jeopardize that trust and hinder progress on critical health challenges facing our nation. Ultimately, this is about finding cures and seeing them through to fruition,” the senators wrote.
“We respectfully request that you ensure the timely release of all FY25 NIH appropriations in accordance with congressional intent,” they added.
The other GOP signatories were Sens. John Boozman (Ark.), Shelley Moore Capito (W.Va.), Bill Cassidy (La.), Susan Collins (Maine), Lindsey Graham (S.C.), Dave McCormick (Pa.), Mitch McConnell (Ky.), Jerry Moran (Kansas), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), Thom Tillis (N.C.), Todd Young (Ind.), Dan Sullivan (Alaska) and Tim Scott (S.C.).
