\n<\/p>\n
The House and Senate appropriations committees have jointly proposed legislation that would generally maintain the Education Department\u2019s funding levels, plus increase the National Institutes of Health\u2019s budget by more than $400\u00a0million this fiscal year. It\u2019s the latest in a trend of bipartisan congressional rebukes of President Trump\u2019s call to slash agencies that support higher ed. <\/p>\n
For the current fiscal year, Trump had asked Congress to cut the NIH by 40\u00a0percent and subtract $12\u00a0billion from ED\u2019s budget. The president proposed eliminating multiple ED programs, including TRIO, GEAR UP and the Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grant program, all of which help low-income students attend college. He also proposed reducing the ED Office for Civil Rights budget by over a third. <\/p>\n
But the proposed funding package senators and representatives released this week maintains funding for all of those programs. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe were surprised to see the level of funding for the higher education programs actually be increased, in some regards\u2014and be maintained,\u201d said Emmanual Guillory, senior director of government relations at the American Council on Education. \u201cWe knew that level funding would be considered a win in this political environment.\u201d <\/p>\n
This latest set of appropriations bills is the final batch that Congress must approve to avert another government shutdown at the end of the month. Democrats have said passing actual appropriations bills, as opposed to another continuing resolution, is key to ensuring that federal agencies spend money as Congress wants.<\/p>\n
Joanne Padr\u00f3n Carney, chief government relations officer for the American Association for the Advancement of Science, told Inside Higher Ed <\/em>that the NIH budget increase is essentially \u201cflat funding,\u201d considering inflation. But, she said, \u201cThis appropriations package once again demonstrates congressional, bipartisan support for research and development and the importance of these investments, as well as rejecting the administration\u2019s very dramatic cuts.\u201d <\/p>\n Earlier this month, Congress largely rejected Trump\u2019s massive proposed cuts to the National Science Foundation, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the Energy Department, three significant higher ed research funders. These developments are adding up to a more encouraging 2026 funding picture for research and programs that support postsecondary students. <\/p>\n But Congress has just 10 days to pass this new funding package, and Trump must still sign both packages into law. A government shutdown will begin after Jan. 30 for those agencies without approved appropriations legislation. <\/p>\n Guillory noted that\u2014despite the Justice Department declaring last month that minority-serving institution programs are unlawful because they \u201ceffectively [employ] a racial quota by limiting institutional eligibility to schools with a certain racial composition\u201d\u2014Congress still proposed funding these programs. <\/p>\n \u201cPretty much every single program that is a minority-serving institution program received an increase in funding,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n The appropriators also want to send another roughly $790\u00a0million to the Institute of Education Sciences, compared to the $261\u00a0million Trump requested. Last year, his administration gutted IES, the federal government\u2019s central education data collection and research funding agency. But, like the broader Education Department, laws passed by Congress continue to require it to exist. <\/p>\n Beyond the appropriations numbers, the proposed legislation to fund the NIH would also prevent the federal government from capping indirect research cost reimbursement rates for NIH grants at 15\u00a0percent, as the Trump administration has unsuccessfully tried to do. Indirect cost reimbursement rates, which individual institutions have historically negotiated with the federal government, pay for research expenses that are difficult to pin to any single project, such as lab costs and patient safety. <\/p>\n The appropriations committees released an explanatory statement alongside the legislation that says, \u201cNeither NIH, nor any other department or agency, may develop or implement any policy, guidance, or rule\u201d that would change how \u201cnegotiated indirect cost rates have been implemented and applied under NIH regulations, as those regulations were in effect during the third quarter of fiscal year 2017.\u201d <\/p>\n GOP members of the House Appropriations Committee didn\u2019t say they were bucking the president in their news release on the proposal. Instead, they said the legislation demonstrates \u201cthe will of the American people who mandated new priorities and accountability in government, including priorities to \u2018Make America Healthy Again\u2019 and \u2018Make America Skilled Again.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cInvestments are directed to where they matter most: into lifesaving biomedical research and resilient medical supply chains, classrooms and training that prepare the next generation for success, and rural hospitals and primary care to end the chronic disease epidemic,\u201d the release said. <\/p>\n Democrats claimed victory for Congress. <\/p>\n \u201cThis latest funding package continues Congress\u2019s forceful rejection of extreme cuts to federal programs proposed by the Trump Administration,\u201d said Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, in a release. <\/p>\n \u201cWhere the White House attempted to eliminate entire programs, we chose to increase their funding,\u201d DeLauro said. \u201cWhere the Administration proposed slashing resources, we chose to sustain funding at current levels. Where President Trump and Budget Director Russ Vought sought broad discretion over federal spending, Congress, on a bipartisan, bicameral basis, chose to reassert its power of the purse.\u201d<\/p>\n Carney says she thinks passage is \u201chighly likely.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cOstensibly, what they call the \u2018four corners\u2019\u2014the chair and ranking members from both chambers and both parties\u2014have come to this agreement on this package,\u201d she said. So, barring \u201clast-minute surprises,\u201d she said, \u201cit should be relatively smooth sailing.\u201d<\/p>\n Rep. Tom Cole, the Republican chair of the House appropriations committee, urged his fellow lawmakers to pass the legislation.<\/p>\n \u201cAt a time when many believed completing the FY26 process was out of reach, we\u2019ve shown that challenges are opportunities,\u201d Cole said in a statement. \u201cIt\u2019s time to get it across the finish line.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The House and Senate appropriations committees have jointly proposed legislation that would generally maintain the Education Department\u2019s funding levels, plus increase the National Institutes of Health\u2019s budget by more than $400\u00a0million this fiscal year. It\u2019s the latest in a trend of bipartisan congressional rebukes of President Trump\u2019s call to slash agencies that support higher ed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":42220,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[113,4579,1998,22313,405,2614],"class_list":{"0":"post-42219","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-education","8":"tag-budget","9":"tag-congress","10":"tag-increasing","11":"tag-maintaining","12":"tag-nih","13":"tag-proposes"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=42219"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42219\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/42220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}