Letter sent to Chairs and
Ranking Members of House and Senate Labor-HHS Appropriations
Subcommittees
July 6, 2000
The Honorable Arlen Specter
Chairman
Labor, Health and Human Services, and
Education Subcommittee
Senate Appropriations Committee
SD-184 Dirksen Senate Office Building
Washington D.C. 20510
Dear Chairman Specter:
On behalf of the nation's extramural research community,
including the leading academic medical centers, clinical researchers,
universities, and research institutes, we thank you for your
sustained and very effective leadership in support of the
National Institutes of Health (NIH). As you continue to advance
the Fiscal 2001 Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education
(L/HHS) funding bill through the appropriations process, we
would like to bring to your attention an issue of particular
importance that was addressed in the House L/HHS bill. Specifically,
we urge you to support the House provision which would raise
the salary cap imposed on extramural NIH researchers to Level
I of the Executive pay scale, or $157,000 per year.
As Congress continues to strive for funding increases for
the NIH, we commend you for providing the resources necessary
to incorporate and retain the best and brightest minds in
the Federally-supported biomedical research enterprise. It
is critical that this effort include the increased participation
of physician-scientists, as well as a renewed commitment to
clinical research.
Since the Federal government imposed the salary cap on extramural
researchers in 1990, academic medical centers and universities
have been increasingly forced to bear more of the costs of
physician-scientists and other investigators' salaries. Additionally,
promising researchers have been drawn to more lucrative positions
in clinical practice. Raising the extramural salary cap to
Executive Level I will allow our institutions to continue
to attract and retain the best investigators in our academic
research programs.
In addition, the higher salary cap will restore a level playing
field between extramural investigators and intramural NIH
researchers who are eligible for Executive Level I salaries
under the Senior Biomedical Research Service (SBRS). Executive
Level I is still below what the salary cap on academic researchers
would be if it had been indexed for inflation increases over
the past decade.
We urge you to include the Executive Level I salary cap
contained in the House bill when you conference with the House
on the FY 2001 L/HHS funding bill.
Sincerely,
- Alzheimer's Association
- American Academy of Otolaryngology -- Head & Neck
Surgery
- American Association for Dental Research
- American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases
- American Association of Immunologists
- American Pediatric Society
- American Physiological Society
- American Society for Bone and Mineral Research
- American Society of Pediatric Nephrologists
- American Thoracic Society
- Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC)
- Association of American Universities (AAU)
- Association of Independent Research Institutes (AIRI)
- Association of Medical School Pediatric Department Chairs
- Association of Professors of Medicine
- Association of Subspecialty Professors
- Council on Governmental Relations (COGR)
- Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology
(FASEB)
- National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant
Colleges (NASULGC)
- National Coalition for Osteoporosis and Related Bone
Disorders
- National Osteoporosis Foundation
- Osteogenesis Imperfecta Foundation
- Society for Pediatric Research
- The Paget's Foundation
- Baylor University
- Boston University School of Medicine
- Boys Town National Research Hospital
- Brown University
- Caltech
- Cedars-Sinai Medical Center
- Columbia University
- Duke University Medical Center
- East Carolina University
- Emory University
- Forsyth Institute
- Harvard University
- Indiana University
- Johns Hopkins University
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- New York University School of Medicine
- Northwestern University
- Pennsylvania State University
- Stanford University
- Temple University
- Thomas Jefferson University
- University of California System
- University of Cincinnati
- University of Florida
- University of Iowa
- University of Miami
- University of Michigan
- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
- University of Pennsylvania
- University of Pittsburgh
- University of Rochester Medical Center
- University of Southern California
- University at Stony Brook
- University of Virginia
- University of Washington
- University of Wisconsin - Madison
- Vanderbilt University
- Wake Forest University School of Medicine
- Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis
- Weill Medical College of Cornell University
- Yale Universit
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