Advocacy

News from the Hill: March 21, 2025

Hours ahead of a deadline on Friday, March 14, at midnight, the Senate passed a CR for the remainder of FY 2025, averting a government shutdown. While the measure ultimately passed on a near-party line vote, it was able to move forward when Democrats helped provided Republican colleagues with the 60 votes necessary to clear procedural hurdles. The FY 2025 CR was couched by Senate Democratic leaders as the lesser-of-two-evils, providing congressional guidance and legally enacted funding for all federal programs rather than risk the expiration of enacted legislation and a shutdown while the administration seeks to gut or reform departments and agencies wholesale. The CR had narrowly passed the House days prior and was vocally supported by the President. The text of the CR can be found here and a section-by-section Summary of the CR can be found here. Additional information can be found here. Key items include:

  • The National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), public health programs and patient care programs are level-funded (or near level-funded) at their FY 2024 levels (summary below). It is also our understanding that report language and related guidance will continue to stand and provide details for specific allocations.
  • $8.88 billion for the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA).
  • $9.22 billion for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
  • $46.76 billion in discretionary funding for NIH.
  • $1.5 billion for ARPA-H.
  • $369 million for the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ).
  • $3.24 billion for the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS).
  • $430.96 million for the Institutional Development Awards (IDeA) program.
  • $534.40 million for the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD).  
  • $928.32 million for the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS).
  • $629.56 million for the Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA) Program (FY 2024 Report Language listed below).

 

Clinical and Translational Science Awards [CTSA] Program.— The Committee provides $629,560,000 for the CTSA program. The Committee once again emphasizes that allocated resources shall be used to provide additional support to CTSA hubs and further enhance ongoing activities. The Committee maintains its strong support for the CTSA program and reaffirms previous language preserving the size, scope, and historic mission of the CTSA program, including the direction that no competitively funded hub shall receive less than 95 percent of the resources that were provided prior to fiscal year 2022. The CTSA program has helped modernize the Nation’s approach to effective and efficient medical research and will continue to be fully supported to facilitate further scientific progress through this critical infrastructure. Finally, the CTSA program is encouraged to catalyze emerging opportunities in AI, big data, and other areas, while maintaining commitment to critical activities, such as training the next generation of cutting-edge physician scientists.

  • By level-funding federal programs, the final FY 2025 CR forgoes additional funding proposed by the Senate (that complied with the enhanced spending limits agreed to under the Fiscal Responsibility Act). This approach forfeited the additional resources provided by the Senate to backfill funding shortfalls for the Cancer Moonshot, BRAIN Initiative, and similar programs at NIH funded through the 21st Century Cures Act.
  • The CR extends telehealth flexibilities for the remainder of the fiscal year but does not include a high-profile fix to Medicare Physician Reimbursement. Further, the CR does not include patient care legislation and various reauthorizations previously considered as part of the December 20 appropriations package that failed to move forward. Democratic Senators have reintroduced a number of these bills with the misleading title of the Bipartisan Healthcare Act considering the measure lacks Republican support currently.

 

By: Dane Christiansen, Washington Representative (the Health and Medicine Counsel)