If you are running a medical research project seeking a cure for cancer or a novel way to employ RNA or an effective way to combat the amyloid plaque buildup that causes Alzheimer’s Disease, you will need things like a lab, high-end computer equipment, state of the art refrigeration and imaging tech, microscopes. You will also need people to clean and maintain the lab and equipment.
Those “indirect cost” elements of a NIH research grant — the things that support the core research — are critical, experts say, to the scientific process.
At major research universities like Harvard, University of Pennsylvania and University of Alabama at Birmingham, it’s not uncommon for the support part of a grant to account for more than half of what’s received — even up to nearly 70%. That is, at 50%, a million dollar grant could mean more than $500,000 is appropriated for research support or indirect costs.
Or it did until Friday, when Elon Musk’s DOGE team declared a cap on the support element of all NIH grants, limiting support-directed funds to 15% of the total grant.
Last year, $9B of the $35B that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) granted for research was used for administrative overhead, what is known as “indirect costs.” Today, NIH lowered the maximum indirect cost rate research institutions can charge the government to 15%, above… pic.twitter.com/FSUYpEGKsr
— NIH (@NIH) February 7, 2025
That means, in broad strokes, that a $1,000,000 grant which might have included $500,000 earmarked to support the work will now get only $75,000 for support — 15% of $500,000. Most medical researchers say that the change is untenable, and that it will hinder potentially life-saving research.
Hindering research may be a problem for politicians who have to explain the cutting of funds that have fueled America’s status as first globally in medical advances.
But an even more pressing political problem — since its impact is more immediate and obvious — is what those cuts may mean in real terms, which is a loss of jobs as the support system is gutted.
Musk’s team’s stated goal, of course, is just that: to gut the system. Now many red state politicians who have fully supported Musk’s moves — in principle — find themselves in the way of his battery-powered bulldozer.
America is $36T in debt with interest payments exceeding defense spending. Russ Vought will right the ship at OMB while implementing @POTUS’ agenda: cutting wasteful spending, protecting taxpayers, and restoring accountability.https://t.co/eEZsSuQKHH
— Senator Katie Boyd Britt (@SenKatieBritt) February 7, 2025
Alabama Senator Katie Britt tried over the weekend to align with the Trump-Musk “eliminate the deep state” principle while also asking that DOGE not eliminate her deep South state’s economy in the process.
Here’s Britt via AL.com: “While the administration works to achieve this goal at NIH, a smart, targeted approach is needed in order to not hinder life-saving, groundbreaking research at high-achieving institutions like those in Alabama.”
But the “targeted approach” Britt asks for is difficult to reconcile with the “delete” it mission of DOGE, which famously instead of examining foreign spending case-by-case just shut down USAID entirely, abruptly shuttering not just some programs but all of them.
The NIH cuts, like other DOGE deletes (as at USAID), are “across the board” style cuts, a sweeping approach hitting unsuspecting targets who are now wondering if it’s wise to throw out the baby with the bathwater.
[NOTE: No American wants their tax dollars wasted — on this, if on nothing else, there is bipartisan agreement among citizens. But who gets to determine what is waste and what is, instead, money well spent? Right now the answer is apparently Elon Musk, and for some in his path, the indiscriminate cuts coming down from DOGE are creating a new reality that will force them to ask, like Britt is doing, for mercy and carve-outs.]
Mayor of Birmingham Randall Woodfin told AL.com: “People need to be reminded that UAB is not just the largest employer in the city, it’s the largest employer in the state. So as it relates to our state’s GDP, as it relates to our economic growth, as it relates to our future around genomics, personalized medicine, and where health care is going, NIH research dollars play a massive, significant role.”
The University of Alabama at Birmingham boasted that it 2023 it set a record for attracting federal grant money. UAB brought in $774.5 million that year to set the record, with $413.7 million coming from the NIH.
The University says it also broke records in 2023 for the amount of money it received from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Department of Defense, and the Department of Energy — all of which are now being subjected to DOGE’s cost-cutting measures.