Billions of dollars in federal biomedical and public health research funding could be in jeopardy due to a technical failure from Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra, according to a new report released by House Republicans on Friday.
A total of 14 directors of some of the largest of the National Institutes of Health’s 27 individual institutes and centers needed to be reappointed to their next five-year term by Becerra on Dec. 12, 2021, pursuant to both legislation and the appointments clause of the Constitution.
However, following a two-year investigation by the House Energy and Commerce Committee, there is no evidence that Becerra signed the necessary paperwork by the December 2021 deadline to fulfill the legal requirements to legitimize the respective directors of the 14 institutes and centers.
“Secretary Becerra, an attorney by trade, failed to sign the basic legal documents and follow the process required by the Constitution and federal law necessary to reappoint key NIH officials, putting their jobs, the decisions they’ve made, and the billions in funding they’ve approved in legal jeopardy,” said Chairwoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), Subcommittee on Health Chairman Brett Guthrie (R-KY), and Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations Chairman Morgan Griffith (R-VA).
The NIH is the leading federal agency responsible for conducting cutting-edge medical research and funding biomedical and public health research at universities across the country. As a whole, the NIH’s annual budget for 2024 was $47.1 billion.
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