Russel Vought's effort to block all funding to outside health researchers was scrapped Tuesday evening after senior White House officials intervened, people familiar with the matter said. The funds—billions of dollars to study diabetes, cancer and more—are set to flow again, those sources said. Via the Wall St. Journal:
The Wall Street Journal reported earlier Tuesday that an initial pause had come in the form of a footnote from the Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought’s office, in a document that doles out federal funds to the National Institutes of Health. The footnote stipulated that the agency’s funding for the remainder of the fiscal year could only go to staff salaries and expenses, not to new grants or certain grants that are up for renewal. Most NIH-funded research is done by outside scientists at labs across the country.
Officials from the Department of Health and Human Services spent the past several days fighting the funding pause, people familiar with the matter said. The OMB reversed course after the Journal’s story was published Tuesday, the people said.
The footnote put a halt on roughly $15 billion in NIH funding, according to an estimate from the office of Sen. Patty Murray (D., Wash.), vice chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee.
“This outrageous decision to prevent NIH from spending the funding that Congress has explicitly provided for medical research must immediately be reversed—life-changing cures and patients’ prognoses hang in the balance,” Murray said before the decision was known to have been reversed.
