If President Bush's newest budget proposal passes, Biology professor Fevzi Daldal likely won't be getting a new microscope for Christmas.
President Bush's announcement of a $2.9 trillion budget proposal includes a $500 million cut for the National Institute of Health, the organization that supplies over 70 percent of Penn's research funding.
As a result, it's been up to the University's lobbyists in Washington to sell research as a worthwhile investment for the country.
Bill Andresen, head of Penn's Office of Federal Affairs, will soon become the next chairman of the Association of American Universities' Biomedical Research Task Force, one of the main lobbying coalitions in Washington.
But the Task Force has a difficult job ahead. With the U.S. budget under extreme pressure from funding the Iraq War, increased spending on entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare and tax cuts, money will likely be tight in the coming years.
"From a budgetary point of view, it's a perfect storm," Vice President of Governmental and Community Affairs Vanda McMurtry said.
But even in that monetary environment, McMurtry believes Congress can be persuaded to fund the NIH with arguments that it will help the economy - a strategy he calls "the century of biology."
In the past, lobbyists have argued that investments in science research would help save lives.
But now, according to McMurtry, lobbyists will appeal to Congress in a different way, emphasizing that promoting scientific research is a necessity for maintaining the country's economic advantage.
"NIH funding is a stream of investments that will let the United States be in the vanguard of the 21st century," McMurtry said.
Andresen said he has begun to work closely with Pennsylvania's delegation in Washington, citing Sen. Arlen Specter and Congressman Chaka Fattah, who represents Penn's district, as important players because of their positions on the appropriations committees that control research funding.
"Specter has been a key champion in efforts to increase NIH funding," Andresen said of the five-term senator and ranking Republican on the appropriations subcommittee that determines the NIH's budget.
But for Penn officials, Bush's proposed cut is just the latest sign of how low science research ranks in the administration's priorities.
Since the war in Iraq began, funding for the NIH has been stagnant, growing at about the rate of inflation.
For Daldal, this means that instead of the 3-percent cost-of-living adjustment his lab was expecting for next year, they will have a 3-percent decrease in funding.
"Three percent means that people who work very hard and deserve a raise do not get a raise, or we have less equipment," Daldal said.
Everyone feels the squeeze, he says, but it hits young researchers the hardest.
Dustin Brisson, a newly-minted Biology Ph.D. and professor here at Penn, has his first grant application with the NIH pending. According to Daldal, nearly all first applications are now rejected because of a lack of funding, so Brisson has many stressful months ahead of him.
The number that Brisson is most concerned with is the "success rate" of grant applications. As available funds have become a rare commodity, this number dropped to 20 percent in 2006, the lowest-ever recorded level since NIH began tracking this statistic in 1970.
And, unlike with undergraduate admissions, higher selectivity in funding is not perceived as a good thing.
"Right now, [graduate school application numbers] are really low," Brisson said, and young talent is being driven away because opportunities for research are drying up.
The average age at which researchers receive their first NIH grant has risen to over 42, which means Brisson, 29, could be waiting a long time.
"I like my job," he says, "but it's more stressful now than it needs to be."
