DeLauro Calls for Immediate Release of Unlawfully Frozen NIH Funds

President Trump and OMB Director Vought are Upending Life-Saving Research

WASHINGTON — House Appropriations Committee and Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Subcommittee Ranking Member Rosa DeLauro (D-CT-03) issued the following statement on Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Russ Vought’s illegal freeze of nearly $15 billion in National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding for research grants:

“The research done at the National Institutes of Health saves lives. It helps us get closer to finding cures and treatments for cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, ALS, diabetes, mental health issues, and maternal mortality. Time and again, Democrats and Republicans have stood together to invest in the NIH and protect its research. Now, President Trump and Director Russ Vought are unilaterally and unlawfully freezing approximately $15 billion in life-saving biomedical research grants.

“This freeze will block research on diseases affecting millions of American families—research that brings hope to countless people suffering. Congress decided how to spend these funds for biomedical research, and the President signed the bill into law. Vought, an unelected bureaucrat, cannot steal billions in congressionally approved research funding. 

“Notification of this theft would be public if Russ Vought was following the law that mandates the online disclosure of OMB funding decisions, known as apportionments. Last week, a federal court agreed that Vought is breaking this basic, bipartisan transparency law, and that the law requires public disclosure to be restored.

“This illegal freeze must be reversed immediately.”

DeLauro’s statement celebrating the recent court decision to restore the OMB apportionments website can be found here.

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