Next January, unless Congress and the White House take action, the National Institutes of Health, or NIH, and the critical medical research it supports will face an uncertain future. Under current law, most domestic spending, including every NIH institute and center, will be subject to a mandatory cut of at least 7.8 percent.
The cuts—which will go into effect January 2—are the result of the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction’s failure to come up with a plan that would reduce the deficit by $1.2 trillion over the next decade. The debt limit deal, which created the committee, established a backup “sequestration” procedure as a mechanism to encourage compromise. Sequestration is a form of automatic budget cuts that are applied across the board.
To read the full, original article click on this link: Protect the National Institutes of Health from the Sequester
