Senator Murray on Pentagon Efforts to Rob NIH Funding for Its Own Use

Washington, D.C. - Today, U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), Vice Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, issued the following statement on the Department of Defense (DOD) inking an inter-agency agreement (IAA) with the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which enables DOD to siphon billions of dollars away from NIH to support DOD initiatives instead of funding lifesaving medical research that Congress specifically set aside resources for.

"As if cancelling lifesaving medical research and clinical trials and firing cancer researchers en masse were not bad enough, the Trump administration is now trying to rob NIH of billions of dollars that Congress provided for medical research so that it can pad the Pentagon's budget.

"This outrageous agreement must be terminated immediately, and we need Republicans in Congress to join us in using their power to ensure that happens. We cannot allow this administration to shred patients' hopes of new, lifesaving cures and treatments so that President Trump and Secretary Hegseth can secretively fund their own priorities in defiance of Congress."

The new agreement, which was not proactively shared with Congress, establishes a framework for DOD to potentially tap billions of dollars in funding that Congress provided specifically for NIH's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) in order to fund DOD initiatives instead. The arrangement could mean that a substantial portion of NIAID's overall budget is not spent on NIAID programs, but Pentagon priorities, which should be considered through the deliberative annual appropriations process.

###