Inside (the Beltway) Scoop

By: Ellen Kuo
Thursday, August 27, 2026
FASEB Responds to Senator Ron Wyden’s RFI on How to Lower Drug Prices

FASEB’s August 12, 2026, response to Senator Ron Wyden’s request for information on lowering drug prices argues that sustained federal investment in basic biological and biomedical research is essential to biopharmaceutical innovation, U.S. competitiveness, and the future scientific workforce. FASEB recommends FY 2027 funding of at least $51.3 billion for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), $11.89 billion for the National Science Foundation (NSF), $1.2 billion for the VA medical and prosthetic research program, $539 million for the USDA Agriculture and Food Research Initiative, and $10.06 billion for the Department of Energy Office of Science. The scientific society also emphasizes stable funding for shared research resources, rigorous and reproducible science, team science, AI research standards, and both animal research and validated New Approach Methodologies. FASEB endorses longer-term funding mechanisms, including the American Cures Act, and warns that proposed changes to federal financial assistance rules could undermine peer review, scholarly societies, and the research infrastructure supporting biomedical innovation.

FASEB also frames scientific talent and international collaboration as critical to maintaining U.S. leadership over China and emerging technologies. It warns that proposed cuts of roughly $6 billion to NIH and more than $4 billion to NSF, combined with restrictive policies affecting international researchers, could weaken the U.S. research enterprise and drive talent overseas. FASEB calls for continued support for early-career investigators, postdoctoral researchers, and programs such as NIH’s Katz Early Stage Investigators Research Project Grant, Maximizing Investigators’ Research Awards or MIRA awards, and the NIH initiative Maximizing Opportunities for Scientific and Academic Independent Careers or MOSAIC. Finally, FASEB points to the CHIPS and Science Act as a lesson in the importance of matching congressional authorizations with actual appropriations: despite significant authorized increases for NSF and the Department of Energy, those funding levels were not realized. FASEB therefore urges Congress to pursue bipartisan, durable approaches that both authorize and appropriate adequate funding for scientific research.