Philadelphia Regional Chapter / Medical Library Association
Thursday, March 13, 2008: The U.S. Senate voted 95 to 4 in favor of adopting the “Specter/Harkin” amendment to the Senate’s fiscus year (FY) 2009 budget resolution. This amendment authorizes an additional $2.1 billion for NIH in FY 2009. This would bring the agency’s total potential funding level up to $32.2 billion. This is an important first step to increasing NIH funding. Click on the link above to read Senator Specter’s floor statement.
March 11, 2008: Senators Arlen Specter (R-PA) and Tom Harkin (D-IA) announced they will offer an amendment to the Senate FY09 Budget Resolution (Senate Resolution 70) which would provide significant new funding for NIH. Their amendment would authorize an additional $2.1 billion for the NIH in FY09, bringing the agency’s total funding level up to $32.2 billion. The House and Senate appropriations committees would still have to provide this additional funding, but including it in the budget resolution is a significant first step. A vote on the Specter/Harken amendment could occur anytime within the next few days - PLEASE contact your two U.S. Senators and do the following:
1 - Identify yourself as a constituent and ask to speak with your Senator’s health legislative assistant;
2 - Make the case for addititonal funding - remind your Senators that NIH has been flat-funded in recent years;
3 - Ask your Senators to vote YES on the Specter/Harken amendment to increase funding for the NIH in the FY09 budget resolution.
4 - Give the aide your contact information and ask t be kept informed of your Senator’s actions.
If you do not know who your two U.S. Senators are, please visit: http://www.senate.gov or call the Senate switchboard at 202-224-3121.
President Bush signed the FY 2008 omnibus package at the end of December 2007. The package provides funding for 11 appropriations bills, and retains the provision that makes the NIH publish access policy mandatory. Section 218 of the bill states, in part: ’The Director of the NIH shall require all investigators funded by the NIH submit or have submitted for them to NLM’s PubMed Central an electronic version of their final, peer-reviewed manuscripts upon acceptance for publication, to be made publicly available no later than 12 months after the official date of publication, provided that the NIH sshall implement the public access policy in a manner consistent with copyright law.’
Division F of the bill provides $3 million for funding for restoration of the EPA libraries recently closed or consolidated by the Administration and directs the Agency to submit a report to the Committees on Appropriations regarding actions it will take to restore publicly available libraries to provide environmental information and data to each EPA region within 90 days of enactment of this Act.
Division G of the bill: $29.23 billion for the NIH, and increase of $328.85 million over FY 2007 and $607.3 million more than requested by President Bush.
$329 million for the National Library of Medicine, a decrease of $608 thousand below FY 2007 and $8.4 million more than requested by President Bush. $263.5 million for the Institute of Museum & Library Services, an increase of $16.3 million over FY 2007 and 7.75 million below the President’s request.
PL 110-85 enacted September 27, 2007 amends the Public Health Service Act to expand the scope of clinical trails that must be registered in ClinicalTrials.gov. It increases the number of registration fields, requires certain results information to be included and sets penalties for noncompliance. Click here for statutory definition of applicable clinical trials. NIH encourages registration of all trails whether reuired under the law or not. The entity responsible for registering is the “responsible party”. The statute defines the responsible party as the sponsor of the trial or the principal investigator if so designated by a sponsor, grantee, contractor, or awardee. Penalties for responsible parties who fail to register, or provide false or misleading information in connection with applicable clinical trials are significant and may include civil monetary penalties and for federally-funded trials, the withholding or recovery of grant funds. Trials may be registered directly at the protocol registration system section of the Clinical Trials website.
On November 15 2007 the U.S. House convened to vote on overriding the President’s veto of FY 2008 Labor-Health and Human Services-Education Appropriations bill that contained funding for NIH, NLM and the provision making the NIH public access policy mandatory. The vote was 277 to 141, just shy of the required 2/3 majority needed to override the Presidential veto.
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