In 2011, Congress and the Administration hammered out a deal to raise the debt ceiling and address the long-term fiscal solvency of the nation. To spur immediate action on lowering the deficit, the bipartisan “Super Committee” was asked to develop a viable budget plan to present to Congress. If such a plan was not developed, then the deal said that there would be automatic across-the-board cuts on January 2, 2013 to all discretionary programs, including the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Perhaps predictably, the Super Committee failed to present a plan to Congress, and large cuts to the NIH were scheduled to take place in January.
Thanks in part, however, to the research community’s advocacy, Congress was able to come up with a last minute agreement to decrease the across-the-board funding cuts to federal programs this year, and to delay their implementation.
To learn more about the sequestration deal, and to find out how you can continue to take action on this issue, please visit CIBR’s government relations page.
