Questions and Answers Table of Contents
How do the institutes plan and receive their
budgets?
NIH budget planning and implementation spans a three-year cycle.
Read more in our Web pages on NIAID
Budget and Planning. For current budget information, go to our Paylines
and Budget page.
Who sets NIAID's funding level and appropriates
our dollars, and how does this work?
Only Congress can appropriate funds. NIAID's budget justification
goes to NIH,
HHS,
and OMB,
becoming part of the department's and then the President's budget
request to Congress for the next fiscal
year. As part of the executive branch of the federal government,
NIH defends the President's budget before Congress during the appropriations
hearings in
March
or April. Congress then
prepares a final budget, which the President must sign into law. Read
more in NIAID
Budget and Planning.
What's the difference between authorizations and appropriations?
An appropriations bill
gives a federal agency authority to spend money for specified purposes.
Appropriations bills are enacted annually. Authorizations
are laws that allow appropriations for a program or an agency for a year
or more but are not for a definite amount of money. For more information,
go to Appropriations Set the Dollars.
What are earmarks, and how do they affect NIH institutes?
Our NIAID Glossary of Funding
and Policy Terms and Acronyms defines
an earmark as
a "requirement by Congress that a federal agency set
aside funds
within an appropriation for a stated recipient or purpose, for example,
to establish a research center grant program or conduct
a clinical trial." Earmarks require agencies
to spend monies on targeted programs, which can affect their budgets.
Who's on NIH's authorization and appropriations
committees and subcommittees?
Find links to these committees at Budget Resolutions Lay a Foundation.
When is the beginning of the fiscal year and the new budget year?
The fiscal
year begins on October 1; however, Congress often does not
pass a budget
resolution for
that year until later in the fall or winter. During that interim period,
NIH operates under a continuing
resolution.
See When We Don't Get a Budget.
What's a continuing resolution?
When Congress fails to pass a budget by the end of the fiscal year,
it passes a continuing resolution to provide budget authority for federal
agencies to continue operating until regular appropriations are enacted.
Do institutes start funding grants at the start of the fiscal year?
Not usually, because Congress usually has not yet passed a budget
resolution. When a continuing resolution is in effect, we award a limited
number
of grants
and fund
at previous fiscal year levels.
Find
more information
in When We Don't Get a Budget.
Why is there so little information on your budget
page at some points during the year?
At the end of the fiscal year, we take down the paylines from Paylines and Budget and archive them at NIAID Final Paylines by Fiscal Year.
At the beginning of a new fiscal year, we do not have
budget or financial
management plan information to post on the site until NIAID receives its appropriation from Congress. NIAID often starts
the fiscal
year operating under an interim payline that
allows us to award only a
limited number of grants.
Applicants and grantees should check our Paylines
and Budget page
often; information usually comes in during the fall and winter. You can receive email notification if you  Subscribe to Email Alerts and select the "NIAID Paylines and Budget" interest category.
When will you post the new year's paylines?
Because the timing varies each year, we cannot give you exact dates for posting new payline information.
Even after Congress passes the appropriations bill, it will take several weeks for the funds to get to us and for our budget office to evaluate the legislation and crunch the numbers to determine the FY 2008 paylines.
To help you know what to expect, we've created a new page, Paylines and Budget Page Changes Throughout the Year.
What is an interim payline?
NIAID uses interim paylines as a way to award the best-scoring grants while we wait for Congress to pass our appropriations for that year. At NIAID, interim paylines are designed to be conservative so that we don't inadvertently exceed our budget while we are on a continuing resolution.
Where do most of NIAID's monies go?
Like other institutes, NIAID spends most of its budget on investigator-initiated research
at organizations such as universities and nonprofit research
foundations. For a breakdown of research
project grants,
training
awards, contracts, administration, and other categories,
see NIAID
Budget Data Comparisons and the main NIAID Budget page.
Where can I find more on concepts and initiatives?
Go to our High-Priority Topics: Concepts
and Initiatives and RFAs,
RFPs, and PAs questions
and answers.
Where do I find the inflation factor for grants?
Each year, NIH creates funding policies in what it calls a financial management plan, which includes information on possible inflationary increases for noncompeting grants awards. NIAID publishes its own Financial Management Plan, which includes the NIH plan and other elements, on our Paylines and Budget page.
Though your organization may ask for any escalation factor it wishes, we may award only up to the set amount. In some years, institutes decrease funds for noncompeting grants.
Where can I find questions and answers about grant budgets?
Go to Managing a Grant questions and
answers. For more information, read Strategy
for Planning a Budget in the NIH Grant Cycle: Application to Renewal.
What if my question wasn't answered here, or I'd like to suggest a question?
Email deaweb@niaid.nih.gov with the title of this page or its URL and your question or comment. We answer questions by email and post them here. Thanks for helping us clarify and expand our knowledge base. |
