Congress Defies Trump, Gives Big Raise to NIH Medical Research
Source: NBC News
MAY 1 2017, 3:33 PM ET
by MAGGIE FOX
Congress sent President Donald Trump a multi-billion dollar poke in the eye Monday, refusing to slash medical spending as Trump proposed and instead giving the National Institutes of Health a $2 billion raise.
The budget agreement, finalized in the wee hours of Monday morning, also defies Trump's demand for cuts to NASA's earth science program, which the administration had targeted as part of a wider promise to cut climate change research. And it provides $103 million to fight the opioid abuse epidemic — an area of rare bipartisan agreement that even Trump supports.
The new budget proposal, which needs votes in the House and Senate, would keep the government running until October, when the 2018 budget is supposed to kick in.
Trump had proposed slashing NIH by $1.2 billion for the rest of 2017 to help pay for his proposed increases in defense spending. Instead, Congress gave the NIH an extra $2 billion for the next 6 months, bumping its total 2017 budget to $34 billion.
Read more: http://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/congress-defies-trump-gives-big-raise-nih-medical-research-n753376
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But assuming this passes, the fight will be this September for FY18 appropriations and given that this is not an election year, they WILL go on their summer recess and do nothing until they return well after Labor Day - waiting until the last minute to try jam things in and extract concessions before October 1st. Then it will be CR time and the mindless insanity of threatened shutdowns which becomes their version of a "War on Christmas".
