Auchincloss, Mass. lawmakers call on Trump to release $1.3B in frozen medical research funding
Calling it a “matter of life and death,” all 11 members of Massachusetts’s Capitol Hill delegation have appealed to the Trump administration to speed the release of more than $1 billion in frozen medical research funding that was supposed to be headed to the Bay State.
A Wednesday letter, led by U.S. Rep. Jake Auchincloss, D-4th District, and sent to Jay Bhattacharya, the director of the National Institutes of Health, highlights reports that the Republican White House has “delayed its distribution of critical grants that advance science and expand patients’ access to care.”
In July, the Republican White House’s Office of Management and Budget halted payments from the National Institutes of Health to researchers around the country, only to reverse course hours later in the face of protests from lawmakers and advocacy groups, the medical news website Stat, reported at the time.
“The threat of impoundment, a president intentionally delaying or withholding funds appropriated by Congress, was rarely a concern until now,” Auchincloss and his colleagues wrote in the letter exclusively shared with MassLive.
“This administration has reportedly delayed as much as $4.7 billion in obligated NIH grant funds to date, which has a direct and immediate impact on the entire medical research enterprise – from research institutions and physician researchers to patients and their families," they continued.
In addition to the Newton lawmaker, all eight Democratic members of the state’s U.S. House contingent, joined by Democratic U.S. Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey, signed the letter to Bhattacharya.
With its concentration of research institutions and hospitals, the situation is “particularly dire for [Massachusetts’s] communities and businesses – and for patients, it is a matter of life and death," Auchincloss and his colleagues wrote.
The state has lost nearly $1.3 billion in medical research funding since the beginning of the second Trump administration, Auchincloss and his colleagues told Bhattacharya.
For instance, UMass Chan Medical School in Worcester was approved for nearly three dozen grants, but has yet to receive the congressionally approved funding, they wrote.
Harvard University, which has been in pitched battle with the White House for months, is still waiting for more than $1.3 million in NIH grant money, they wrote.
“While withholding and terminating funds has had significant and severe impacts on these institutions, the most devastating impact has been on the patients who are losing access to innovative treatments and therapies unavailable outside of clinical trial settings as a result of these actions,” they wrote.
“Patients are dying because their care teams now have considerable doubt and confusion as to what trials are open and available, for how long, and whether or not they are funded,” Auchincloss and his colleagues argued.
The meter is running for the federal government to spend the money, with the current budget year ending on Sept. 30.
Through June 30, the agency had spent $30 billion in approved funding, compared to $34.7 billion the year before, according to Chief Health Care Executive, an industry trade publication.
“These are already allocated funds. Congress has signed off on them,” Heather Pierce, the senior director for science policy and regulatory counsel for the Association of American Medical Colleges, told the publication. “There’s no precedent to having this much money remaining this close to the end of the federal fiscal year.”
On its official website, the AAMC, as it’s known, has a countdown clock of the unspent money. As of Wednesday morning, the NIH had 27 days and 13 hours to spend the federal cash.
Away from the public health impact of withholding the money, there is also an economic impact, the lawmakers told Bhattacharya.
In the 2023 federal budget year, NIH funding generated nearly $93 billion in economic activity nationwide, returning about $2.46 in activity for every $1 invested, the lawmakers argued.
In the 2024 federal budget year, Massachusetts received $3.5 billion in funding from NIH, which supported more than 30,000 jobs and generated about $7.7 billion in economic activity, the lawmakers asserted.
“Failing to distribute allocated funds will have lasting, catastrophic impacts on local and global economies,” they wrote. “We cannot allow this administration to continue to undermine U.S. global leadership in medical and scientific innovation and endanger patients’ lives.”
Further, delaying the funding hands an advantage to such geopolitical rivals as China, contributing to a “brain drain” of talent that comes at the nation’s expense, Auchincloss and his colleagues wrote.
“The termination and withholding of NIH grants only accelerates the leads other countries are rapidly gaining on the United States,” they wrote. “The Trump Administration’s decisions are dangerous and short-sighted.”
And then, ripping a page from a by-now familiar playbook, Auchincloss and his colleagues closed the letter this way: “Thank you for your attention to this critical matter.”
By: John Micek
Source: Mass Live