This week, the Senate Labor-Health and Human Services Subcommittee, chaired by Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO), released the fiscal year (FY) 2020 health spending bill, which includes annual funding for NIH, CDC and most health research and services programs. The bill includes a proposed $3 billion funding increase for the NIH, for a funding level of $42,084 billion in FY2020. The House FY2020 health spending bill, which the full House of Representatives passed in July, provided a $2 billion proposed funding increase for the NIH, so it is likely that NIH will receive a funding increase between $2 and $3 billion for 2020, which, if enacted when FY2020 spending is finalized later this fall, would be a significant victory for the research community.

The Senate health spending bill proposes a funding increase of about $180 million for the CDC, or just over 2 percent, although this level is significantly less than the House’s proposal of about a 10 percent increase for CDC over the current FY2019 agency budget of $7,262 billion. The Senate health spending bill includes the following for CDC programs:

• A $1 million proposed funding increase for the CDC’s asthma program, from $29 million in FY2019 to $30 million in FY2020.

• Flat funding at $135 million for the domestic tuberculosis program, in contrast to the House bill’s $10 million funding increase for the program.

• Flat funding at the FY2019 level of $7,2 million for the global TB program, in contrast to the House bill’s $10 million funding increase for the program.

• Flat funding at the FY2019 level for the Office on Smoking and Health at $210 million.

• A $2.5 million proposed funding increase for the National Institute on Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) from $336.3 million in FY2019 to $338.8 million in FY2020. The funding increase is specified for NIOSH’s Firefighter Cancer Registry and for mining research.

Although the Senate FY2020 health spending bill has not yet been voted on by the subcommittee or the full Appropriations Committee due to disagreements over an amendment on reproductive health funding, we expect that it will move forward. Congress now has less than two weeks before the Sept. 30 deadline for finalizing fiscal year (FY) 2020 government spending, otherwise the federal government will shut down. The House is currently working on a temporary spending measure to avert a government shutdown that would extend government funding until after Thanksgiving. The temporary spending measure must be passed by each chamber and signed into law by the President.