[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 29 (Wednesday, February 12, 2025)]
[House]
[Page H651]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




            OPPOSING CUTS TO NIH FUNDING FOR INDIRECT COSTS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Massachusetts (Mr. Auchincloss) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. AUCHINCLOSS. Madam Speaker, I rise today in opposition to the 
illegal and unwise policy recently announced by the National Institutes 
of Health to limit their indirect cost recapture rate to 15 percent.
  To start with, as we start with most Trump administration maneuvers 
these last 3 weeks, it is illegal. I know that my Republican colleagues 
don't think that it is possible for the President to answer to the rule 
of law, but it is critical, particularly with the biomedical enterprise 
that makes long-term, expensive investments, to have confidence that 
when Congress or the President make a commitment, they stand by it over 
the course of years and even across decades. Undermining the rule of 
law undermines our ability to do the kinds of long-term, 
transformational science that changes lives.
  In 2017, when the Trump administration first attempted to lower the 
indirect cost recapture rate to 10 percent, the Appropriations 
Committee, by an overwhelming bipartisan vote, rejected it and froze 
the IDC at its current level. That has been reauthorized every single 
year from 2017 through 2024.
  I ask my Republican colleagues: You voted for this. They are breaking 
that law that you voted for. What are you going to do about it?
  Now, the NIH might say: Well, we are referring to a different section 
of the code whereby we can, for a subset of grants with documentation, 
reduce the IDC.
  That is not the NIH policy, though. The NIH did not do a subset of 
grants. They did it for every single grant and with zero documentation.
  Wake up, Republicans. They are breaking your law.
  The NIH might claim that what we are doing here is actually not cuts 
to the NIH because the same $35 billion is going to go out to science, 
but now it is just going to be more of those direct experiments, the 
people, the reagents, and the travel, and less of that expensive 
overhead. While it is true that the same amount of dollars could go out 
the door, in reality, these institutions, whether universities or 
hospitals, are going to be decreasingly able to afford to accept them.
  Of any given experiment, the overhead associated with that experiment 
is well more than 15 percent. Research facilities, energy bills, 
support personnel, and data and technology, these things are expensive. 
We are not in the era of beakers in somebody's backyard doing chemical 
experiments. We are in an era of cutting-edge genetic engineering, and 
the equipment costs money.
  Fewer institutions and investigators are going to be able to accept 
these grants. What we are ultimately going to do is privatize research 
infrastructure, so we are going to get less of it. It is just as though 
the Department of Transportation told businesses to build their own 
bridges and sidewalks. We just wouldn't get as many of them.
  The impact in Massachusetts is going to be profound. It is a $2 
billion attack on the research infrastructure that undergirds our eds 
and meds enterprise, an enterprise that creates billions of dollars in 
economic activity that supports hundreds of thousands of well-paying 
jobs. Each of those jobs in biopharma, for example, can create five 
other jobs. That is a profound economic multiplier.
  The work that we do in Massachusetts changes lives. There is progress 
on Alzheimer's, under which 15 million Americans will suffer by 2050 if 
we do not come up with therapies. Gestational diabetes--and, just 
recently, a non-opiate painkiller was developed in Massachusetts with 
NIH basic research funds that will provide outlets for acute pain that 
do not expose people to this most addictive chemical that has caused so 
much pain.
  My Republican colleagues might say, ``Yeah, that is Massachusetts.'' 
That is the whole point, don't you see? ``It is the blue State and 
those universities and hospitals who think they are so much better than 
everybody else.'' That is exactly the point.
  Here is my challenge to my Republican colleagues: Go back to your 
districts, talk to your universities, and talk to your hospitals. See 
how they are feeling about this policy. What you are going to hear is 
that they can't afford to take these grants. The research, the 
development, and the commercialization that you brag about when you go 
home, the ribbons that you cut for new companies and for new projects, 
all rest upon this research infrastructure that is getting cut.
  Go talk to these companies. Go talk to these institutions of higher 
education. Go talk to these hospitals. They don't want to see this 
policy go into effect, and they want to see you vote for it and explain 
it back home, not hide behind the NIH.
  So, they are losing. Who is winning? China. There were two main 
themes in the recent J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference. One was 
artificial intelligence, which, by the way, requires a lot of research 
infrastructure. The second was how good China has gotten at biotech in 
the last few years.
  The Chinese biotech enterprise is looking at the United States 
cutting our own research infrastructure at a time when they are 
investing tens of billions of dollars, and they cannot believe their 
luck.
  My Republican colleagues need to wake up, stand up, and support basic 
science.

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