ICYMI: Senator Murray on Senate Republicans’ Pro-Billionaire Budget Resolution, Trump and Musk’s Devastating Funding Freeze and Mass Firings
ICYMI: Senator Murray Leads Entire Democratic Caucus in Raising Alarm Over Trump Admin Pushing Illegal Indiscriminate Funding Cuts to NIH, Derailing Lifesaving Research
ICYMI: Senator Murray Statement on Meeting with NIH Nominee Jay Bhattacharya
Washington, D.C. — Today on the Senate floor, U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), Vice Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee and a senior member and former Chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, put forward an amendment to Senate Republicans’ budget resolution that would reverse massive, arbitrary cuts to lifesaving research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) that Donald Trump and Elon Musk tried to make earlier this month by setting the maximum reimbursement rate for indirect costs to 15 percent.
Republicans blocked Murray’s amendment.
Importantly, the Trump administration’s move to change the indirect costs rate is illegal—Congress’ bipartisan Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations Bill prohibits modifications to NIH’s indirect costs. The policy is currently temporarily blocked in the courts. Last week, Murray led the entire Senate Democratic caucus in sending a letter to Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. expressing alarm over the funding cuts and other recent moves by the Trump administration that threaten to undermine America’s biomedical research infrastructure and set us back generations.
MURRAY AMENDMENT #880: Senator Murray offered an amendment to reverse the Trump Administration’s indiscriminate cut to biomedical research and the lifesaving work supported by the NIH at research institutions across the country. Murray offered an identical amendment at the Senate Budget Committee markup last week—which no Republican spoke in opposition to during debate, but every Republican voted against.
Senator Murray said on the Senate floor when offering her amendment, #880:
“The Trump administration is working to destroy medical research as we know it with an illegal, unrealistic cap on the NIH reimbursement rate for indirect costs. That would mean: cancer researchers laid off, lifesaving clinical trials cancelled, and more. It’s also violates bipartisan appropriations law. I should know, I helped author that provision. And Republicans should know—they worked with me to pass it.”
Earlier today, Murray delivered a lengthy speech on the Senate floor where she laid out in detail how Republicans’ budget resolution is a blueprint for deep, painful cuts to programs like Medicaid and SNAP that help working families—all in service of passing more tax giveaways for billionaires. Murray also underscored how the Trump administration’s lawless mass firings and funding freeze is hurting people and jeopardizing critical services in every part of the country, and why a clean full-year CR is not an acceptable solution to government funding.
Last week at the Senate Budget Committee mark up of Senate Republicans’ Budget resolution, Senator Murray, a senior member and former chair of the committee, put forward six amendments to steer Republicans toward a bipartisan approach to spending, affirm Congress’ power of the purse, reverse cuts to NIH, deliver transparency into the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), and more. Republicans unanimously opposed every amendment Murray and other Democrats offered. In her opening remarks, Murray also called for Elon Musk to come before the Committee to discuss his already in-motion efforts to decimate programs people count on.
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