Inside (the Beltway) Scoop

By: Ellen Kuo and Jennifer Zeitzer
Thursday, April 23, 2026
Congress returned from its two-week spring break and immediately began to review the President’s Fiscal Year (FY) 2027 budget request that arrived on Capitol Hill while lawmakers were away (see previous Washington Update coverage). As is typical, once the administration’s budget is transmitted to Capitol Hill, members of the Cabinet and agency administrators began appearing at congressional hearings to explain the details of the proposed spending request. On April 15, Russell Vought, Director of the White House Office of Management of Budget (OMB), appeared before the Senate and House Budget committees and faced numerous questions about the administration’s budget, including whether agencies would be directed to spend funds previously appropriated by Congress and if OMB would engage in further attempts to impound money directed towards specific programs, as happened in 2025. The OMB director spoke about how the administration does not have to spend all of the money appropriated if the work can be done with less. Vought also expressed support for reducing discretionary non-defense spending by continuing to find ways to eliminate projects that the administration determines to be wasteful. Other members of the Budget committee mentioned the 12 percent cut to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and 55 percent reduction for the National Science Foundation (NSF) that were included in the administration’s budget request and asked Director Vought to justify the cuts. 

The House Budget committee provided stakeholders with an opportunity to submit additional testimony to be included in the official hearing record. FASEB submitted a statement that expressed deep concern over proposals in the FY 2027 budget that would cut funding for NIH, NSF, the Department of Energy Office of Science, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. FASEB’s testimony echoed the federation’s statement on the FY 2027 administration budget request and strongly urged Congress to compel the administration to act with urgency to avoid any further delays and disruptions in obligating FY 2026 funding at these agencies as directed by Congress in the final appropriations bills that were approved in March 2026. 

Other important hearings included the appearance of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Secretary of Health and Human Services before the House Ways and Means Committee and the House Appropriations Labor, Health and Human Services (LHHS) and Related Agencies Subcommittee on April 16. At the LHHS hearing, Kennedy heard a lot of bipartisan pushback on the proposed cuts to NIH, with Chairman Robert Aderholdt (AL) stating he was a strong supporter of NIH and that large swings in funding for biomedical research are counterproductive. LHHS Subcommittee ranking member Rosa DeLauro (CT) expressed concern about the slow pace of getting grants out the door to researchers, noting, “a $6 billion cut to NIH is something we are not going to do.”

Also appearing before House appropriators was the Secretary of the Department of Energy (DOE), who testified in support of the Genesis Mission and addressed questions on how DOE projects were terminated. The Energy Secretary noted that the terminations were not based on politics or whether they were in blue states, despite some Democrats insisting they were. 

In addition, the House Science Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee held a hearing on April 15 to discuss trends, issues, and policy considerations around the current state of scientific publishing. Witnesses were Carl Maxwell, Sr. Vice President, Public Policy, Association of American Publishers; Kate Travis, Managing Editor, Retraction Watch; and Dr. Jason Owen-Smith, Executive Director, Institute for Research on Innovation & Science, University of Michigan. The hearing examined open access policies, peer review, conflict of interest policies, data access and reproducibility, predatory journals, paper mills, “publish or perish” incentive systems, and how the use of artificial intelligence, large language models, and machine learning is influencing the quality of science, scientific integrity, and scientific misconduct. During the questions and answers period, several members of the subcommittee asked the witnesses for their input on the provision in the president’s FY 2027 budget proposal that would establish a “government-wide prohibition on publishing and subscription fees,” and allow the use of federal funds for “expensive subscriptions to academic journals and prohibitively high publishing costs” only if required by federal statute or approved in advance by a federal agency. 

As the House Appropriations Committees held hearings on the administration’s budget, they also began consideration of the FY 2027 spending bills. On April 13, House Appropriations Committee Chairman Tom Cole (OK) released the schedule of planned “mark-up” sessions to review and vote on the 12 individual bills that will fund federal agencies and programs. Chairman Cole’s schedule anticipates that the mark-ups will be completed by June 24. On April 17, the House Military Construction and Veterans Affairs (VA) Appropriations Subcommittee released its draft bill, providing $900 million for VA Medical and Prosthetic Research Program, $45 million below the FY 2026 enacted level of $945 million. The Military Construction/VA measure also included more flexible language on animal research. The revised language (Section 246) will allow the VA to support research involving canines, felines, and non-human primates with explicit, written approval from the Secretary rather than imposing a blanket prohibition on studies involving these animals as was included in the FY 2026 VA funding bill.