Durbin Introduces Legislation To Ensure Stable, Robust Funding For Biomedical Research

07.31.24

Durbin Introduces Legislation To Ensure Stable, Robust Funding For Biomedical Research

The American Cures Act would offer consistent, guaranteed funding to research institutions that helped defeat polio, create the COVID-19 vaccine, map the human genome, improve cancer treatment, and more

WASHINGTON - U.S. Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL) today introduced the American Cures Act, legislation that restores the United States' commitment to breakthrough scientific and biomedical research. The American Cures Act would create mandatory funds to provide steady, predictable funding for breakthrough research at America's top research agencies, allowing the U.S. to remain a leader in development and discovery for decades to come.

The American Cures Act would overcome the uncertainty of the annual discretionary appropriations process-in which critical investments for biomedical and scientific research risk being crowded out-and instead set a steady growth rate in mandatory federal spending for biomedical research conducted at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Department of Defense (DoD), and the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). Each year, the bill would increase medical research funding for these agencies at a rate of medical inflation plus five percent.

This reliable, long-term investment would allow the agencies to plan and manage strategic growth while maximizing efficiencies and providing certainty to young researchers that there will be opportunities to pursue federally funded research. It also would make additional funding available within the relevant annual appropriations bills-paving the way for other important health, education, labor, veterans', and defense programs to benefit.

"Where would we be today without medical research and innovation? We certainly would not have access to a COVID-19 vaccine, a shot for polio, more effective cancer treatments, and HIV/AIDS would still be a death sentence. For years, I have said that the most important investment we can make in our future is in biomedical and scientific research. If we want to find treatments and cures to disease and develop technology of the future, then we must empower our federal research agencies. The American Cures Act provides the consistent, robust funding needed to ensure America leads the world in breakthrough discoveries," Durbin said.

In the last two centuries, U.S. government support for scientific and biomedical research has helped split the atom, defeat polio, conquer space, create the Internet, map the human genome, develop a COVID vaccine, and so much more. Between Fiscal Years 2015 and 2022, Congress showed its commitment to biomedical and scientific research, providing strong and stable funding increases to our nation's premier research agencies. During this time, Congress provided NIH with an overall 52 percent funding increase-from $30.3 billion to $46.2 billion in annual appropriations-successfully providing annual funding increases of at least five percent plus inflation, a target first championed by then-NIH Director Francis Collins.

However, over the past two Fiscal Years, Congress has failed to provide our nation's medical research agencies and programs with the funding increases they desperately need. This threatens the future of medical research funding, American leadership in innovation, and the promise of new cures and treatments for patients in need. The American Cures Act aims to ensure stable, robust funding is accessible to federal research institutions.

U.S. Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), and Sherrod Brown (D-OH) are cosponsors of the legislation.

The American Cures Act is endorsed by: Research!America, American Heart Association, Association of American Cancer Institutes, Epilepsy Foundation, Epilepsies Action Network, SHEPHERD Foundation, Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago, Northwestern University, United for Medical Research, and the National Association of Veterans' Research and Education Foundations.

A copy of the bill text is available here.

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