FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE | AADR contact: Ingrid L. Thomas
+1.703.299.8084 or [email protected] |
February 10, 2016
The American Association for Dental Research today issued the following statement on President Obama’s FY17 budget by the Association’s Executive Director Christopher Fox, DMD DMSc:
The American Association for Dental Research is disappointed with the President’s fiscal year 2017 budget request. In particular, we are deeply concerned with the President’s proposal to cut discretionary funding at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and backfill those cuts using an unauthorized mandatory funding stream. Importantly, even with the utilization of the mandatory funding, almost all of the Institutes and Centers at NIH are level funded with the previous fiscal year.
This sets a dangerous precedent and threatens to slow progress toward life-saving cures and more effective treatments. Mandatory funding should be used to supplement—not supplant—the core funding of NIH. If the President’s budget were signed into law today, absent mandatory funding, NIH funding would be cut over $1 billion, which is almost equivalent to the cuts the biomedical research enterprise experienced during the sequestration order in March 2013.
We recognize that the overall amount of funding for non-defense discretionary programs is essentially level with the previous year and provides little opportunity for growth. The nation’s investment in overall discretionary spending is still inadequate to meet the most pressing needs of our country, and we encourage Congress to work together to develop a long-term solution to our debt and deficit that does not rely on cuts to non-defense discretionary spending.
AADR looks forward to working with Congress to support increased funding for all of the Institutes and Centers at NIH, including the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research, and to encourage them to honor the long-standing tradition of allocating resources to the entire biomedical research enterprise at NIH, recognizing that a discovery in one area of research may be applied to another. Maintaining flexibility, honoring the scientific peer-review process and supporting all research is critical to our endeavor to bring cures to Americans.
About the American Association for Dental Research
The American Association for Dental Research (AADR) is a nonprofit organization with nearly 3,800 individual members dedicated to: (1) advancing research and increasing knowledge for the improvement of oral health, (2) supporting and representing the oral health research community, and (3) facilitating the communication and application of research findings. AADR is the largest Division of the International Association for Dental Research (IADR). To learn more, visit www.aadr.org.