- Cut to Current National Institutes of Health (NIH) Budget Won't Fly, GOP Lawmaker Says Stat by Lev Facher—The $1.2 billion cut to the National Institutes of Health’s 2017 budget, proposed today by the White House, seems like a nonstarter in Congress. “Not going to happen,” Representative Tom Cole of Oklahoma, the Republican who chairs the House appropriations health subcommittee, told STAT. The proposed cut—a surprise given that Congress long ago reached a framework for a broader spending plan through April—comes on top of a $5.8 billion hit to the NIH proposed in President Donald Trump’s budget for 2018.