House Spending Bill Maintains NIH Funding Levels

The U.S. House Committee on Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies (Labor-HHS), which provides funding for the NIH, released its draft fiscal year (FY) 2026 spending bill and a summary Sept. 1. The subcommittee voted Sept. 2 to advance the bill to the full Appropriations Committee, which is expected to vote on the bill next week. The bill’s accompanying report language, which provides key details about how the committee requests that each agency spend their federal funding allocations, will be released prior to the full committee vote. 

The bill provides $48 billion for the NIH base budget and includes funding for all 27 Institutes and Centers (ICs) of the agency, maintaining current funding levels. The bill rejects the President’s Budget Request to fund the NIH at a much lower figure of $27.5 billion, as well as the request’s restructuring of the NIH’s 27 IC’s to eight. The House’s bill funds NIH to almost the same as the Senate’s bill of $48.7 billion. The House also allocated a slight increase to the National Cancer Institute at approximately $7.3 billion, compared to current funding at $7.2 billion. The Senate version of the bill provided approximately $7.4 billion to NCI. The bill did include a significant cut to the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), from $1.5 billion to $945 million, a $555 million (-37%) cut compared to FY 2025, while the Senate version of the bill maintained ARPA-H’s FY 2025 levels.

The Ad Hoc Group for Medical Research, which includes ACR®, released a statement urging the committee to continue to recognize medical research as a national priority and advance a bipartisan spending bill. ACR will continue to follow the appropriations process as it develops, with the government funding deadline of Sept. 30 approaching. Congress must agree on a funding package before this deadline to ensure the government stays open.

For more information, contact Katie Grady, ACR Government Affairs Director.