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Gary Friedmann represents the towns of Bar Harbor, Mount Desert, Lamoine and the Cranberry Isles in the Maine House of Representatives.
I recently sent a letter to Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to urge the immediate withdrawal of the National Institute of Health’s (NIH’s) order to cut grant awards for scientific research.
If implemented, this policy will do immense and immediate harm to our nation’s world-class biomedical research system, including two leading research institutions located in the district I represent in Maine’s House of Representatives: The Jackson Laboratory and the MDI Biological Laboratory.
In addition to generating important research findings that have contributed to the development of life-saving treatments, these two institutions are among my district’s most important employers. The Jackson Laboratory alone employs nearly 1,700 residents across several counties in rural coastal Maine.
The sudden loss of research facilities and administrative cost payments that NIH had already agreed to provide through extensive and good-faith negotiations with each of these two institutions will have widespread negative impacts, including immediate job losses, hardship for local businesses that supply goods and services to these institutions, and the weakening of a skilled local workforce that has taken decades to develop.
In addition, these cuts also threaten workforce training programs that ensure the next generation of scientists, physicians and entrepreneurs are available to provide cutting-edge medical treatments and care.
I am disheartened that this policy appears to have been the product of a rushed and ill-informed process. The order includes factually incorrect and misleading statements about the scope and purpose of indirect cost payments, and fails to explain how NIH reached its decision or why it is not required to adhere to longstanding federal law — the Administrative Procedure Act — that bars agencies from making arbitrary and capricious decisions. In addition, the policy change appears to directly violate a congressional directive barring NIH from unilaterally changing its indirect cost rates without the approval of Congress.
While I share the goal of ensuring that taxpayer dollars are used efficiently, the new indirect-cost policy risks moving our nation and my district in the opposite direction. Withdrawing this policy would enable NIH to start over, engage in meaningful dialog with the affected communities, and develop smarter and more realistic policy.
