Inside (the Beltway) Scoop

By: Ellen Kuo
Wednesday, August 13, 2025
Senate Pushes Hard to Pass Spending Bills Before Recessing 

The Senate Appropriations committee held a markup of their Labor, Health, Human Services, Education and Related Agencies bill on July 31 and favorably reported by a vote of 26-3 the bill funding the individual institutes and centers of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), rather than consolidating them as the president’s budget had requested. The bill also provided $1.5 billion for ARPA-H available until September 30, 2028. Total funding for NIH is $48.7 billion, which includes the funding for ARPA-H and is a net increase of $400 million over fiscal year 2025. The Ad Hoc Group for Medical Research subtracts out the ARPA-H funding for a base budget of $47.201 billion. See their statement following the markup. Additionally, there is targeted funding for Alzheimer’s, cancer, Lyme disease, ALS, diabetes, and rare disease research. FASEB’s president has also issued a statement concerning this outcome of the markup. 

“As the chairman of the Labor-HHS Appropriations Subcommittee, I am proud that Ranking Member Baldwin and I were able to once again craft an effective bill that maintains provisions that are critical to the departments our subcommittee oversees. This bill also continues our bipartisan record by including a number of priorities from both sides of the aisle like, investments in America’s biomedical research, child care, education, mental and rural heath, and continued efforts to combat the opioid epidemic. I am pleased that this bill reflects many of the priorities that will help West Virginians from all corners of our state,” said Senator Shelley Moore Capito, Chair of the Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Appropriations Subcommittee.

During the markup, Senators repeated their concerns about the Office of Management and Budget refusing to allow funding to flow for extramural research grants for the rest of the fiscal year and would only allow funding for NIH salaries and expenses. This action was promptly reversed by senior officials in the Trump administration, but not without causing distress in the research community and statements of condemnation from Senator Patty Murray and Rep. Rosa DeLauro, both top Democratic lawmakers on their respective chamber’s Appropriations committees.

On August 1, Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins and her Vice Chair Patty Murray managed to pass three spending bills through the full Senate before the chamber adjourned for its summer break. The package consisted of the Senate’s Military Construction-VA (HR 3944) and Agriculture bill (S 2256), approved by a vote of 87-9, and the Legislative Branch (S 2257) bill, which passed by a vote of 81-15. The Senate considered a total of nine amendments to HR 3944 and S. 2256, adopting two of those amendments by voice vote. Watch Collins’ floor statement on Senate passage of these bills and Murray’s press release.