WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, Representative Scott Peters (CA-50) filed two amendments to the Republican budget blueprint, which extends $4.5 trillion in temporary tax cuts that add to the national debt and cuts vital programs like Medicaid to offset the cost. His first amendment would strike a provision that allows Republicans to pretend that extending these tax cuts skewed toward the wealthy costs nothing. Non-partisan experts at the Committee for a Responsible Budget have estimated that this Republican gimmick alone could explode the national debt by an additional $3.4 to $4.6 trillion. His second amendment would stop Republican attempts to cut the National Institutes of Health (NIH) budget and instead boost it by billions of dollars. Republicans on the House Rules Committee refused to consider Rep. Peters’ amendments.

“As Trump’s tariffs drive up the cost of living for American households, Republicans in Congress double down on a reckless budget that blows up the national debt at the expense of hard-working Americans,” said Rep. Scott Peters. “I’ve stood with some of my Republicans colleagues to call out our national debt in the past, but now these same people are poised to dramatically increase it. My amendment would have forced Republicans to face the truth: their budget is cruel and not at all fiscally conservative.”

“Countless families around the country are desperate for cures to Alzheimer’s, cancer, and other diseases that depend on government funded research,” said Rep. Peters. “It is both cruel and wasteful to stop these clinical studies and trials as be forced to throw out their data. New cures to these diseases will save the government money in the long run as we move patients from expensive long-term care to healthy lives. We should invest more, not less in NIH and other basic scientific research.”      

Representative Peters is the author of the Fiscal Commission Act, legislation to establish a bipartisan, bicameral, and open-doored commission to tackle our nation’s long-term debt, help us avoid automatic and across-the-board cuts to Social Security and Medicare, and secure a more prosperous future for our children. This approach stands in stark contrast to the partisan bill Republicans are advancing, which will only make our debt problems worse.

San Diego is home to one of the country’s largest life sciences ecosystems, including world-class public and private research institutions and private companies that turn discoveries into therapies and cures. Rep. Peters' district receives nearly $1 billion in NIH grant funding every year, more than any other district in California.

In February, the Trump Administration announced a cap on all NIH grants for expenditures like lab space, utilities, IT, and equipment. These investments are integral to the work researchers do, and the proposed cuts will result in an estimated $800 million cut in funding in California alone. The NIH funding cap will devastate the development of life-saving research, inhibit patient access to life-saving treatments and clinical trials, and cede American dominance in biomedical research to our foreign competitors like China and Russia for years to come. In response, Rep. Peters led a letter demanding the Trump Administration preserve NIH funding. In March, Rep. Peters brought Dr. James B. Brewer, MD, PhD, medical professor and chair of the Department of Neurosciences at the University of California, San Diego, as his guest to the President’s Joint Address to Congress to highlight the devastation of these cuts. While federal courts have blocked the President’s across-the-board cuts, the administration is already looking for other ways to cut NIH grant funding. 

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