A plurality of voters to a recent GEN poll, 35.5%, expects that Congress will approve a smaller NIH budget for the 2012 fiscal year. Opinion was almost evenly split, with 23.7% predicting a flat budget for the agency, 22.4% expecting Congress to do nothing about funding NIH, and 18.4% expecting a larger budget. NIH faces the prospect of going the entire FY 2012 without an approved budget, unless Congressional leaders can agree to a budget for the agency and the rest of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) through a Labor-HHS-Education spending bill. In the meantime, they are looking to fund Labor-HHS-Education through one or more stopgap “continuing resolutions” (CRs); the current CR expires on December 16.
