President Barack Obama has signed off on a spending package to provide agency funding for the remainder of FY13. This package includes some modest funding increases for the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Science Foundation, but the legislation locks in sequestration. These deep, across-the-board budget cuts for FY13 and beyond more than wiped out the funding increases.

While the attention paid to NIH, FDA, CDC and NSF is a promising platform for our advocacy efforts, sequestration still slashed NIH funding by $1.5 billion and cut hundreds of millions from NSF, FDA and CDC. Unless an alternative plan is enacted, these cuts will continue for the next decade.

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FY14 Budget

On April 10, President Obama presented a $3.8 trillion budget request for fiscal 2014 to Congress that attempts to bridge the gap between the vastly divergent budget plans the House and Senate each adopted last month, particularly with regard to deficit reduction.

The administration’s plan sets a long-term goal of reducing the deficit by $1.8 trillion over 10 years, offsetting proposed increases in discretionary spending with a mix of entitlement cuts and revenue increases. The budget proposes $2 in spending cuts for every $1 of new revenue.

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