If President Trump moves forward with reported plans to create a committee with veto authority over National Institutes of Health grants, he would be violating the law, top congressional appropriators said.
The lawmakers’ warnings came after The New York Times reported that the White House has begun drafting an executive order to create an external committee with the power to veto NIH grants that do not conform to Mr. Trump’s political agenda.
“Any attempt to politicize grantmaking at the National Institutes of Health, or any other agency, by another means — whether an Executive Order or guidance — is contrary to congressional intent,” said Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins, Maine Republican.
She pointed to a provision in the recently enacted stopgap funding bill that temporarily blocks a proposed Office of Management and Budget rule giving political appointees final say over whether to issue grants. The ban on OMB finalizing the rule lasts until Dec. 11, when the stopgap expires.
The provision “blocks OMB’s proposed rule or any substantially similar one,” Ms. Collins said in her statement warning that a Trump executive order to politicize NIH grantmaking would run afoul of the law.
She also said such an executive order would undermine “the long-standing principle that the government funds awards based on scientific need and merit, rather than political ideology.”
A White House official told The Washington Times that reporting about policy decisions that the administration has not officially announced “should be regarded as baseless speculation.”
“The Trump administration remains committed to the core mission of the NIH,” the official said.
Washington Sen. Patty Murray, the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, also issued a statement pushing back on Mr. Trump’s reported proposal for a NIH grant review committee.
“Whether lifesaving medical research gets funded or not should be determined by experts at the NIH — not a panel of lackeys chosen by Donald Trump and [OMB Director] Russ Vought,” she said. “Under this scheme, a single political appointee could kill a cancer study or an Alzheimer’s trial with no scientific reason at all.”
Ms. Murray, who has previously vowed to make permanent the temporary ban on the OMB grantmaking rule, said the reports about the executive order on NIH grants further underscore the need for such action.
“President Trump will stop at nothing to defund medical research that fundamentally changes the lives of patients and families across the country, and Republicans need to join us to put a stop to any effort by this administration to politicize what groundbreaking new treatments and cures we decide as a country to invest in — whether that’s an OMB rule or a new executive order,” she said.
Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman, New Jersey Democrat who sits on the House Appropriations subcommittee with jurisdiction over NIH, said agency leaders have repeatedly assured appropriators that politics would be kept out of the grantmaking process.
“As recently as this past Tuesday, NIH Institute directors told members of the Appropriations Committee that grant funding was still on track,” she said in a statement Monday. “Yet today, we get the news that President Trump and OMB Director Vought are moving to cut funding that doesn’t align with their extreme ideology.”
Ms. Watson Coleman said Congress must “reassert its authority over the budget” and ensure NIH funding remains protected from political attacks.
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