Senate Panel Approves More Money for NIH.

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Author: Brainard, JeffreyBurd, Stephen

The maximum Pell Grant would remain level for the fourth year in a row and the budget of the National Institutes of Health would rise 3.7 percent under a spending bill for 2006 approved by a U.S. Senate Appropriations committee last week.

In addition, the bill would preserve this year's level of funds for the Health Professions programs, which train students from minority groups and disadvantaged backgrounds to be physicians and dentists. A version of the bill approved by the House of Representatives in June (HR 3010) would sharply cut that spending. Those and other differences will be ironed out in negotiations among lawmakers later this year.

The Senate measure had some good news for colleges. By changing some federal accounting rules, the bill's authors would wipe out a $4.3-billion shortfall that has plagued the Pell Grant program. The bill would also spare some higher-education programs that President Bush has proposed eliminating, including several popular college-preparation programs for students from low-income families and the Carl D. Perkins Vocational and Technical Education programs, which provide $400-million annually to community colleges.

In addition, the measure would increase spending on Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grants, which are intended to supplement Pell Grants for needy students, to $804.8-million, a $26-million increase over the 2005 fiscal year.

The leaders of the Senate subcommittee ignored many of President Bush's proposals. For example, they rejected his proposals to provide larger Pell Grants to students who take a rigorous high-school curriculum. They also approved only half of the $250-million that the president had requested for a new job-training program for community colleges, as did the House in its bill.

The bill would provide a total of $29.42-billion for the National Institutes of Health. The 3.7-percent gain would be an increase of more than $1-billion over this year's level and is well above the half-percent increase proposed in the House version of the bill. In fact, the increase in the Senate bill would exceed the rate of inflation for biomedical research, estimated by the NIH at 3.2 percent for 2006.

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By Jeffrey Brainard and Stephen Burd