On February 28, five medical research advocacy groups - the Ad Hoc Group for Medical Research, the Campaign for Medical Research (CMR), the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB), the National Health Council (NHC), and Research!America - joined together to call on Congress to expand the nation's investment in medical research by increasing the budget of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) by $1.9 billion in FY 2009. The groups' recommendation would increase the NIH's discretionary budget authority provided through the Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations Subcommittee to $31.1 billion in FY 2009, an increase of approximately 6.6 percent.