Senators press HHS on withheld NIH grants, indirect cost caps and clinical trials

Senator Tammy Baldwin and others pressed Secretary Kennedy over reports that NIH had withheld roughly $3 billion in awards and that more than 3,200 grants were not awarded compared with the same period a year earlier. "This budget request cuts, to the National Institutes of Health of $18,000,000,000," Baldwin said in her opening remarks, and later raised specific instances of grants held up at Alzheimer's research centers, cancer centers, and rare disease networks.

Secretary Kennedy said the administration was prioritizing certain research and "cutting waste" while preserving core biomedical research. He told the committee, "We are not abandoning any life saving research," and said gene and cell therapies are priorities for his department and the Food and Drug Administration leadership.

Senators sought clarity about who authorized withholding grant awards, whether panels were converted to award grants, and the status of clinical trials. Senator Collins recounted that NIH had placed layoffs and pause notices to intramural investigators and cited reports that clinical center patient volume and physician-researcher staffing had declined. Senator Baldwin and Senator Murray warned that pausing grants and terminating studies could slow biomedical innovation and impede clinical trials that patients rely on.

The committee also discussed a proposed cap on indirect costs at 15 percent for research grants. Secretary Kennedy said HHS was considering alternatives to the current indirect-cost mechanism and sought new models to fund overhead at universities, citing concern that some institutions were charging high indirect rates. Senators representing state research institutions urged attention to how any change would affect public universities that lack large endowments.

No formal committee action was taken; senators asked HHS to produce documentation explaining the decisions to delay or withhold NIH awards, the rationale for any indirect-cost policy changes, and the specific effect on active clinical trials and intramural research.