Today Congressman Dave Obey (D-WI), Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, introduced a $410 billion bill to wrap up work on the fiscal year 2009 appropriations bills.
Important Components of the Bills:
National Institutes of Health: $30.3 billion (a 3.2% increase over FY08) for lifesaving research into diseases such as Alzheimer’s, cancer and diabetes, $938 million above last year, so that NIH can capitalize on unprecedented scientific opportunities with almost 10,600 new research grants.
Food and Drug Administration: $2 billion* (a 20.6% increase over FY08), $335 million above 2008, to help FDA improve the safety of domestic and imported food and medical products.
*This includes $16 million for the Critical Path Initiative, a $9 million increase over FY08.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: $6.6 billion (a 3.8% increase over FY08) for the public health programs administered by CDC, $239 million above last year. These funds support core public health functions at the Federal, State, and local levels, including responding to urgent public health threats.
Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ): This measure also includes $50 million for comparative effectiveness research within the total for “Research on Health Costs, Quality, and Outcomes.”
This appropriation supplements the CER funding included in the recently-enacted stimulus law, which allocated a one-time $300 million to AHRQ out of a total of $1.1 billion for CER.
Read the full summaries below: