U.S. Sen. Dave McCormick said Monday he would oppose any White House push to reduce funding for the National Institutes of Health, the largest biomedical research agency in the world.
Roll Call, citing sources in the medical research industry, reported last week that the White House could seek to cut NIH funding by 20% in its 2027 budget request — a claim disputed by the administration. The White House sought to slash NIH funding by 40% this fiscal year, but Congress rejected that request and instead boosted funding for the agency by $415 million.
“I will be a strong advocate for increasing the NIH budget again this year. I’m not in favor of the president’s budget, if in fact it’s the case that it would reduce NIH funding by 20% or 40% or whatever it is,” McCormick, a Republican from Pittsburgh’s Squirrel Hill neighborhood, said during a stop in the Strip District.
McCormick led the director of NIH, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, on a tour of some of Pittsburgh’s leading life sciences and research centers Monday. Stops included the UPMC Vision Institute, the UPMC Rehabilitation Institute and UPMC Hillman Cancer Center. Bhattacharya also led a life sciences industry symposium on how NIH funding is fueling commercialization and biotechnology growth in the Pittsburgh region.
Pennsylvania ranks as the nation’s fourth-largest recipient of NIH funding, receiving nearly $2.3 billion in federal research funding last fiscal year, according to McCormick. The University of Pittsburgh and UPMC received $670 million of that funding, ranking ninth among institutions nationally, McCormick said.
“We have to make sure places like Pittsburgh have as good a chance (to secure research funding) as some of the other places that tend to be more traditionally known as centers for biomedical innovation, like Boston and San Francisco,” Bhattacharya said.
“Pittsburgh is an amazing place to do research,” he added.
Bhattacharya acknowledged that the number of grants awarded by NIH dropped last fiscal year, but he said the size of the average award grew and the agency spent all of its nearly $48 billion budget on “real research.”
When asked to elaborate on what that research entailed, Bhattacharya said, “Politicized agendas that don’t have any chance of improving people’s health, I just don’t want to fund those.”
He offered as an example research that tried to determine whether structural racism was responsible for poor health in minority populations.
“We’ve tried that sort of DEI investment, and it hasn’t translated to better health for minorities,” Bhattacharya said. “Instead, if you care about minority health, we should be funding things like the two different cures for sickle cell anemia, a condition that adversely affects primarily African-American kids, (and) investing in research that will lower the price of that so that it’s accessible to everybody.”
McCormick and Bhattacharya are planning a similar visit to Philadelphia on Tuesday.