ICYMI: Senator Murray Slams Indirect Cost Rate for NIH as Massive Indiscriminate Cut, Setting Back Progress on Lifesaving Research
ICYMI: Senator Murray Leads Entire Democratic Caucus in Raising Alarm Over Trump Admin Pushing Illegal Indiscriminate Funding Cuts to NIH, Derailing Lifesaving Research
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Murray: “Trump and Elon—either through sheer ignorance or a genuine lack of caring—are putting lifesaving research in America on life support… canceling important NIH grant review and advisory council meetings. Tens of thousands of grants at NIH have already been held up by the Trump administration’s illegal actions—creating an enormous backlog that is already jeopardizing jobs, entire labs, and most importantly, the development of treatments and cures.”
Washington DC – Today, U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), a senior member and former Chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee (HELP), released the following statement after meeting with Dr. Jayanta “Jay” Bhattacharya, President Donald Trump’s nominee to be Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Murray has been a voz principal speaking out against the Trump administration’s attempts to freeze federal funds and to cap NIH’s indirect cost rate, which would create a serious funding shortfall for research institutions of all types across the country, stifling the development of new cures for disease, and ripping treatments away from patients in need.
“Trump and Elon—either through sheer ignorance or a genuine lack of caring—are putting lifesaving research in America on life support. From their attempts to illegally rip funding away from our research institutions, which would catastrophically derail the development of cures and treatments that sick patients are counting on, to an unprecedented freeze on external communications, to canceling important NIH grant review and advisory council meetings.
“Tens of thousands of grants at NIH have already been held up by the Trump administration’s illegal actions—creating an enormous backlog that is already jeopardizing jobs, entire labs, and most importantly, the development of treatments and cures.
“In our meeting today, I pressed Dr. Bhattachara on the Trump administration’s reckless attacks on biomedical research and whether DOGE will play a role in deciding which scientists to hire and fire at NIH. I also asked Dr. Bhattachara to lay out the steps he would take to ensure women’s health research is a priority at NIH and that it isn’t undermined by this administration’s witch hunt against whatever they decide is allegedly ‘woke’.
“It is incredibly important that we have a leader at NIH who will stand up for the agency’s role as a world leader in lifesaving research, stand up for science and truth, and stand up to this administration’s brazen attempts to undermine lifesaving research. While I appreciated the opportunity to meet with Dr. Bhattachara today, I am not any less alarmed by how thoughtless and destructive this administration’s approach to NIH research has been and will continue to be.”
As a longtime appropriator and former Chair of the Senate HELP Committee, Murray has long fought to boost biomedical research, strengthen public health infrastructure, and make health care more affordable and accessible. Over her years as a senior member of the Appropriations Committee, she has secured billions of dollars in increases for biomedical research at the National Institutes of Health, and during her time as Chair of the HELP Committee she established the new ARPA-H research agency as part of her Ley PREVENIR Pandemias to advance some of the most cutting-edge research in the field. Senator Murray was also the lead Democratic negotiator of the bipartisan Ley de curaciones del siglo XXI, which delivered a major federal investment to boost NIH research, among many other investments.
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