Senators on the Appropriations Committee on Sunday released a stopgap funding bill to avert a government shutdown by Oct. 1 and temporarily block a White House proposal that would fundamentally change how the federal government awards and manages grants.
In late May, The Office of Management and Budget released a proposed rule to overhaul the Uniform Guidance (2 C.F.R. Part 200) that reshapes how billions of dollars in research, education and public health funding are awarded. The proposal would require all federal grants, including scientific grants, to be approved by President Donald Trump's political appointees to ensure the funding demonstrably "advances the President's policy priorities." The political appointees also would ensure grants do not support projects the administration opposes, including those that “fund, promote, encourage, subsidize, or facilitate” diversity, equity and inclusion principles or “deny the biological reality of … the sex binary."
OMB said the proposal would "improve transparency, accountability, and oversight for Federal awards."
The proposal was met with a groundswell of opposition among researchers, scientists, biomedical organizations and doctors. Public comments were due July 13—a total of 496,805 comments were publicly submitted, the vast majority of them negative, according to a STAT analysis of 52,000 comments that were posted in full.
The provision to block the proposed rule was tucked into a bipartisan measure to fund the government through Dec. 11. Senate leaders have set an initial procedural vote for Monday night and want to pass the bill by the end of the week — just before senators are scheduled to leave town for a five-week recess, Politico reported.
U.S. Senator Patty Murray, D-WA, Vice Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said in a statement, "Because of Democrats’ unrelenting efforts, this bill blocks implementation of OMB’s corrupt new grants rule for the duration of the CR. The proposed rule would systematically politicize federal funding and allow Trump officials to cancel grants at any time for any reason. Enabling this rule would only give Trump the greenlight to take even more federal funding hostage."
Murray said Republicans "rejected killing the proposed rule outright," but said she would "keep fighting to put a stop to it once and for all" and "keep pressing my Republican colleagues to do exactly that."
Earlier this summer, every Senate Democrat called on OMB to rescind the proposed regulation on federal financial assistance. The senators warned the proposal exceeds OMB’s statutory authority, undermines Congress’s constitutional power of the purse, and would allow the President to weaponize federal grants for political purposes.
Top Republicans, including Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins of Maine and Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, publicly voiced support for blocking the regulation. Collins stated she is "pleased" that the bipartisan agreement prevents OMB’s proposed rule regarding federal financial assistance from taking effect. "I advocated for significant changes to the proposed rule in a July 6 letter to the agency, citing its potential to politicize grants and harm small, rural communities, families, and biomedical research," Collins said.
AcademyHealth, a nonpartisan, nonprofit professional organization dedicated to advancing the fields of health services research and health policy, said the proposed rule would give political appointees the "authority to block federally funded research on ideological grounds, prohibit entire categories of health services inquiry, defund the professional infrastructure that trains the next generation of researchers, and restrict how publicly funded science reaches the public it is meant to serve."
"AcademyHealth believes the proposed rule raises substantial concerns regarding research independence, grant administration, scientific dissemination, and the long-term effectiveness of federal research investments. We call on the Office of Management and Budget to rescind the proposal," the organization said in its official comment on the proposed rule. "In short, this proposed rule would severely degrade the ability of the United States of America to support health and scientific innovation at any meaningful level and would destabilize research organizations and entities that taxpayers have supported and invested in for decades. Such research has driven billions of dollars in economic output, improved American health care, and established America as the world leader in innovation."
Research!America, the Association of American Medical Colleges, the American Hospital Association, the American Academy of Nursing and other medical research groups, clinical societies and health policy groups submitted comments warning that the rule would politicize scientific peer review and destabilize biomedical research.
The proposed rule would "weaken the role of expert scientific review in funding decisions, elevate political review, expand agencies’ authority to suspend or terminate awards, have a chilling effect on health disparities research, disincentivize research collaborations and scientific exchange, and impose new requirements that slow, add costs to, and reduce the volume of research conducted in the U.S.," Research!America said in its submitted comments.
AAMC urged OMB to rescind the proposal, writing in its submitted comments that it "fail[s] to demonstrate how the revisions would meaningfully improve the current system for the awarding, oversight, and management of federal financial assistance, and in fact, would introduce ambiguity and instability into processes on which recipients and the American public currently rely."
The AHA said it was concerned that several provisions of the proposed regulation "could introduce substantial uncertainty regarding the stability and predictability of federal grant awards. That uncertainty may ultimately undermine the very objectives federal financial assistance is intended to achieve," the organization said.
The American Academy of Nursing also called on OMB to withdraw the proposal, writing that the proposed changes to federal grant rules would "weaken scientific peer review, allow politically driven funding and grant termination decisions, restrict international research collaborations, and limit support for conferences, publications, and professional memberships."
Elizabeth Ginexi, a scientist with 30 years of research experience and a former NIH Scientific Program Official, wrote in a public comment that the proposed rule "is not a grants management reform."
"It is the most consequential attack on American science and on the integrity of federal grantmaking in the postwar era. It would place political appointees above scientific peer reviewers in every grant funding decision, allow any active grant to be terminated mid-project for undefined political reasons, prohibit international scientific collaboration, ban journal subscriptions and publication costs that have been allowable for over fifty years, and require that every federal grant program align with the current administration's political priorities rather than with scientific need or congressional mandate," Ginexi wrote.
OMB said it planned to finalize the rule by Oct. 1. If the Senate’s funding extension were approved by both chambers, it would block OMB from implementing the rule, at least until the measure expires on Dec. 11, The Washington Post reported.
The American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network applauded the continuing resolution. "Protecting the integrity of federal cancer research funding is essential to ensuring that lifesaving investments remain guided by science, not politics," ACS CAN president Lisa Lacasse said in a statement. "We are grateful that this bipartisan provision provides the stability researchers and patients need by allowing the National Institutes of Health and the National Cancer Institute to continue their critical work without unnecessary disruption. Every delay in research is a delay in new treatments and new hope for the millions of Americans impacted by cancer. We urge Congress to retain the Senate language and pass a complete continuing resolution promptly so that progress against cancer is not put on hold.”