WASHINGTON — With Congress headed on break, a continuing resolution in place through Dec. 11 and no hope for a near-term defense supplemental, Defense Department planners are scrambling to stretch available funds and make it through the end of the fiscal year.
The issue took center stage this week, thanks to a Thursday statement from Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, where she said the Pentagon is making a “secretive attempt to siphon” billions of dollars away from the National Institutes of Health through an “interagency agreement.”
“These funds were provided for lifesaving medical research, not as extra money for the Department of Defense,” she added. “It is no secret that the Department of Defense is facing enormous financial pressure because of President Trump’s war of choice with Iran. But the Trump administration cannot make American patients, families, and scientists pay the price.”
In a statement to NOTUS, NIH said the proposed agreement was around a collaboration on medical technologies, and notably, neither NIH or DeLauro said a deal was ever consummated. Appropriations Committee chairman Tom Cole, R-Okla., said in a statement late Friday that “not one dollar has been transferred from the NIH to the Department of War.”
