As the principal scientific societies representing the population sciences and federally supported U.S. population research centers, the Population Association of America (PAA) and Association of Population Centers (APC) are alarmed by funding and policy proposals embedded in the House Fiscal Year 2025 House Labor, Health and Human Services and Education Appropriations bill. The bill recommends unacceptable funding levels and policy provisions, especially affecting the National Institutes of Health (NIH), that could impede scientific progress and adversely affect access to high-quality Federal statistical data.
National Institutes of Health
The NIH is the primary source of competitive, discretionary grant funding supporting research conducted by population scientists, including demographers, economists, sociologists, and epidemiologists. NIH supports the interdisciplinary research that population scientists conduct on topics such as adolescent health, aging, human development, mortality, disability, and fertility to improve the public’s health and wellbeing and understand the causes and consequences of population change.
While PAA and APC endorsed the FY 2025 NIH funding level, $51.3 billion, recommended by the Ad Hoc Group for Medical Research, we appreciate the Subcommittee recognizing NIH’s value by preserving its funding at the FY 2024 level. However, we are very concerned that the bill includes provisions that would dramatically restructure the NIH. As you know, NIH stakeholder organizations are currently responding to a request from the House Energy and Commerce Chair for feedback on potential NIH reform. Given public input is currently being solicited, it would be premature to integrate such changes into the spending bill without the benefit of robust input from stakeholders inside and outside of the Federal government. Even more concerning, it would be extremely disruptive to the scientific enterprise to implement such dramatic changes so abruptly without first soliciting and integrating the scientific expertise that could inform such an exercise and understanding fully the costs and benefits of any NIH reorganization proposal. For these reasons, we urge the Committee to strike language in the bill that would consolidate NIH from 27 to 15 Institutes and Centers and allow careful deliberations to proceed on this significant matter.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention/NCHS
The House bill includes $7.4 billion for the CDC, a cut of $1.8 billion or nearly 20 percent below the FY 2024 enacted level and 24 percent below the President’s
request. $129 million. Given the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), the nation’s principal health statistics agency, is housed within CDC, PAA and APC are very concerned how a cut to CDC of this magnitude would impact NCHS. Since 2010, NCHS has lost 19% of its purchasing power. The agency needs stable, robust funding in FY 2025 to sustain and improve its ability to deliver timely, high quality and accessible data, including vital statistics and health outcomes as measured by the National Health Interview Survey and National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.
Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ)
The House bill seeks to eliminate AHRQ as a stand-alone agency and relocate its functions within the NIH. PAA and APC object to this provision and urge the Committee to reinstate funding for AHRQ as an independent agency.
Institute of Education Sciences
The House bill includes $740.4 million for the IES, the flagship research, evaluation, and statistical agency of the Department of Education, which would be a 6.6 percent decrease below FY 2024 and 9.2 percent below the Administration’s request. The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), part of IES, collects data and compiles statistics that inform research, instruction, evaluation, and planning decisions made by population scientists working in applied and academic research sectors. Limited funding and staff resources have precluded NCES from providing real-time data. Our organizations are concerned about how reduced funding for IES could adversely affect the ability of NCES to fulfill its mission.
Bureau of Labor Statistics
The bill provides $630 million to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), which is consistent with the agency’s FY 2024 funding level. Population scientists use BLS data to understand how work, unemployment, and retirement influence health and well-being across the lifespan. Increased support for the BLS is needed so it can further efforts to modernize surveys and enhance secure public access to BLS datasets as well as continue to implement a new long overdue cohort of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth—an invaluable dataset that has been collecting data regarding young people’s labor market behavior and educational experiences since 1980. Our organizations support sustained increases for the BLS to ensure these initiatives can advance.
Our organizations recognize that the FY 2025 appropriations process is a challenging one in which the Committee must contend with tight budget caps. We call on members of the House Appropriations Committee to work together in a bipartisan fashion to draft a Fiscal Year 2025 Labor, Health and Human Services and Education Appropriations bill that restores funding for scientific and statistical research agencies in the bill and to remove provisions that would prematurely authorize drastic organizational changes to the NIH.
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