FY 2008 Ominbus Spending Bill Finally Approved; NIH Receives $133 Million Increase
December 20, 2007 – The Congress and President Bush have finally agreed on an omnibus budget package that "hews closely to the White House’s budget limits but shifts billions of dollars to the Democratic majority’s priorities." The package includes the fiscal year 2008 Labor-HHS-Education appropriations bill and the 10 other unapproved FY 2008 appropriations bills.
National Institues of Health (NIH) Funding – Under the package, NIH receives $28.942 billion, an increase of $133 million (+.46 percent). This includes $294.7 million transfer to the Global AIDS Fund. The legislation provides $495.6 million for the NIH Common Fund, an increase of $12.6 million (+2.61 percent). Clearly, these budget numbers are disturbing as they do not even keep pace with medical inflation. Below is a summary of the final budget numbers for institutes of particular interest to ASH:
(Amounts in Thousands)
| Institute |
FY 2007 Comparable |
FY 2008 President's Request |
FY 2008 |
| NCI |
4,792,624 |
4,782,114 |
4,805,088 (+12,464) |
| NHLBI |
2,922,391 |
2,925,413 |
2,922,928 (+537) |
| NIDDK |
1,852,996 |
1,858,045 |
1,853,248 (+252) |
| NCRR |
1,131,633 |
1,112,498 |
1,149,446 (+17,813) |
| NIA |
1,045,468 |
1,047,148 |
1,047,260 (+1,792) |
The funding bill also includes new language mandating public access of NIH funded research. The language states:
The Director of the National Institutes of Health shall require that all investigators funded by the NIH submit or have submitted for them to the National Library of Medicine’s PubMed Central electronic version of their final, peer-reviewed manuscripts upon acceptance for publication to be made publicly available no later than 12 months after the official date of publications: Provided, that the NIH shall implement the public access policy in a manner consistent with copyright law.
ASH’s scientific journal Blood already complies with this policy by submitting final NIH-funded research articles to NIH on behalf of its authors. ASH was the first nonprofit publisher to agree to the NIH policy over a year ago when it was voluntary. Through this agreement, ASH removes the burden for authors to submit their manuscripts while also maintaining its publisher embargo period of up to 12 months. Therefore, as a result of ASH’s participation in this agreement, all Blood authors who have NIH-funded research articles have no obligation to submit manuscripts to the NIH archive because Blood will do this on their behalf.
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