The House is setting the stage for Congress to give FDA the spending boost that President Donald Trump was seeking. The House Appropriations Committee's subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies released a bill Tuesday calling for a more than $300 million increase in FDA's FY19 budget over FY18.
Trump's FY19 budget request proposed increasing the agency's budget by $473 million, the largest budget authority appropriation increase in absolute dollars ever proposed for the agency, according to the Alliance for a Stronger FDA. Trump's proposal emphasized an increasing investment in regulatory capacity for medical device and pharmaceutical manufacturing, as well as digital health technologies (see BioCentury Extra, Feb. 12).
In a statement, the House Appropriations Committee said the bill would provide a net increase of $303 million for FDA medical product safety activities, including an increase of $5 million for the new Oncology Center of Excellence, and bring FDA's FY19 budget to $3.1 billion.
According to the committee, the bill earmarks $30 million to fight opioid abuse, $38.5 million to advance modern drug and biological product manufacturing and $27 million for the modernization of generic drug development and review.
Separately, the bill also appropriates $70 million to accelerate medical product development as authorized by the 21st Century Cures Act
The bill now moves to the full House Appropriations Committee, which is expected to meet within a couple weeks, according to Steven Grossman, deputy executive director at the Alliance for a Stronger FDA.
The omnibus spending bill signed by Trump in March gave FDA a FY18 budget of $2.8 billion, plus an additional $94 million in discretionary funds to combat the opioid epidemic (see BioCentury Extra, March 23).