Congress on Monday overwhelming approved a spending package for fiscal 2021 that includes $7.9 billion for the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention—$125 million over its current budget—while the budget for CMS would remain flat at $4 billion.
The package also includes a roughly 3% increase in funding for the National Institutes of Health.
The $1.4 trillion appropriations package would boost the NIH's budget by $1.25 billion to approximately $42.9 billion. Of that total, $6.36 billion would go to the National Cancer Institute, $3.66 billion to the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, and $615.8 million to the National Human Genome Research Institute.
The NIH's BRAIN Initiative would see a $60 million increase in funding to $560 million in FY 2021, while Alzheimer's disease research would receive an additional $300 million to $3.12 billion and $220 million would go toward supporting the development of a universal flu vaccine.
The Senate voted to approve the bill 92-6, with the U.S. House of Representatives voting to pass the legislation by 359-53. President Donald Trump is expected to sign the legislation.
This story first appeared in our sister publication, Genomeweb.
