Warren: Double Science Research Spending

With negotiations for a budget deal set to start Wednesday in Congress, Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Monday called for the doubling of scientific and biomedical research through the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Warren, speaking to business leaders at a breakfast in South Boston, also said Congress should remove the NIH from the “crazy” annual budgeting process that creates uncertainty in the research community and has led to a 12-percent decline in the number of research projects getting funded since 2003.

“When it comes to the economy and the budget, refusing to invest in the NIH is the budgetary equivalent of cutting off your feet to save on shoes,” Warren told a packed audience at the Seaport Boston Hotel in her first Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce speech.

Warren said investments in basic scientific research leads to new drugs and cures for diseases that reduced health care costs. If the United States doesn’t invest, she said other countries like China will step in to fill the void. The annual budget for the NIH is about $30 billion, while the National Science Foundation receives $7 billion. Warren said the federal government can afford to double that spending by cutting back on oil and agricultural subsidies and tax breaks for the wealthy.

In the federal 2013 fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30, The University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester brought in more than $129 million in NIH grants, the fourth highest total in the state.