Continuing
November 20, 2013
It will be interesting to watch our favorite NIH Institutes’ behavior with regard to starting grants for this round. Traditionally, many ICs are conservative with the Dec 1 start dates when Congress has us under Continuing Resolution instead of a real appropriation. The NIH ICs wait until late Jan-early Mar in hopes that Congress will act.
It is pretty clear, however, that CR is the best we can hope for until at least Feb of 2015 with a new Congress in place.
The possible upside is that the NIH ICs will just go ahead and roll out grants for Dec 1 under the realization that budget levels are predictable at current amounts.
DrugMonkey 
November 20, 2013 at 4:32 pm
So Ryan was saying yesterday they were going to fund the government at current levels, but I don’t know about any additional sequester.
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November 20, 2013 at 7:25 pm
If I was at the NIH I would be planning for the next round of sequester. I will be amazed if the NIH escapes another cut at this point. The Repubs have their backs up and the Dems are on the ropes thanks to the ACA fuck-up, so I don’t see the incentive for the GOP to do a deal. I also don’t see where Dems have leverage anymore. It used to be defense spending, but the baggers don’t give a shit about that either. Some kind of CR is of courseinevitable but, absent a GOP cave, the new sequester will kick in in January.
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November 21, 2013 at 5:17 am
@Dave “…the new sequester will kick in in January.”
Does that mean we will lose 7% from our funded grants or that NIH will fund 7% less grants (or both)? I guess the great cull is accelerating. My dept and similar depts at my uni are still hiring asst profs, apparently thinking that the hot new asst prof will be more likely to get funded than the tired mid-level guys and senior faculty.
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November 21, 2013 at 7:17 am
@Joe – The FY14 cut to the NIH could be anywhere from 0 – 19% under the Fy13 sequester levels, depending on the political outlook. The House Committee (i.e. GOP) has already approved Labor-HHS appropriations for FY14 and the budget is truly eye popping. The committee gave HHS 122 billion or so, which is an19% cut below FY13 sequester levels. That’s 19% in one year! But like I said, we really don’t know how each HHS program will suffer, but a 19% cut to the NIH would be in the region of $5 billion, in addition to the 5% cut in Fy13. It would be horrible, but I think even the baggers will protect the NIH a little such that something in the region of 5 – 10% should be anticipated. In all honesty, the senate (Dems) and Obama’s budget are best case but even those restores only some of the FY13 cuts, and there is no way these will be approved as is…..unless the dems give up some major “entitlement” cuts etc, which they cannot do politically.
I just think that if the NIH is assuming that FY13 levels will be carried through the duration of FY14, as DM is insinuating, then I can only hope they have prepared for the worse-case scenarios.
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