On December 17, 2011, Congress passed an omnibus spending bill containing fiscal year (FY) 2012 funding for most of the federal government, including the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and VA medical and prosthetic research.
The bill provides $30.6 billion for NIH, an increase of $240 million (0.8%) over FY 2011. The bill also includes $576 million in funding for the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) and eliminates the National Center for Research Resources (NCRR). Most of the funding for NCATS comes from the transfer of existing programs from NCRR and the other institutes and centers. $10 million in new funding is provided for the Cures Acceleration Network within NCATS. The bill also lowers the salary cap on extramural grants from Executive Level I ($199,700) to Executive Level II ($179,700). Language accompanying the bill strongly urges the NIH to continue devoting nearly 90% of its budget to extramural research, and to establish safeguards to ensure that current spending on basic research across the institutes is maintained.
The bill also provides $581 million for medical and prosthetic research at the VA. This is the same level that the program was funded at in FY 2011.
Funding for the National Science Foundation (NSF) and NASA was included in a smaller package of legislation signed into law in November. The NSF received $7 billion, a $173 million increase over FY 2011, and NASA received $17.8 billion, $648 million below FY 2011.