Fact Check: NIH Director Misleads Congress on Ability to Spend 2026 Funds

NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya tries to write off extreme award delays as 'political noise' during the March 17, 2026 House Appropriations Committee Hearing

“I don’t see a bottleneck now.... A lot of the concerns, it just seems like political noise to me. It’s not reality.”

-NIH Director Jayanta Bhattacharya on the status of NIH research grant awards

Figure Credit: Association of American Universities, using data from NIH Reporter: https://www.aau.edu/newsroom/leading-research-universities-report/data-show-dramatic-slowdown-nih-grantmaking

As current and recent workers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), we are tired. We are tired of inventing convoluted workarounds to roadblocks this administration keeps setting to obstruct science. We are tired of censoring grants and the moral distress that comes with it. We are tired of being locked out of the agency we love after dedicating our careers to its mission. But most of all, we are tired of watching our Director, Jay Bhattacharya, lie to Congress and the American public about what is happening at NIH.

We are tired. But we aren’t giving up on NIH. We aren’t giving up on science. And we definitely aren’t giving up on future cures for our fellow Americans. So we are launching a blog series (in our personal capacities!) to unmask Jay Bhattacharya’s lies. We are starting with his testimony during the March 17 House Appropriations Committee hearing. Over the next few weeks, we will highlight 10 key areas where Bhattacharya flagrantly mischaracterized, obfuscated, or just plain lied about the state of NIH under oath to members of Congress.

In our first post of the series, we address NIH’s ability to spend the fiscal year (FY) 2026 funding appropriated by Congress, as required by law. Throughout the hearing, Bhattacharya assured Representatives NIH was on track to fully obligate NIH’s FY26 funds. In reality, NIH staff shortages combined with cumbersome, unnecessary, and discriminatory grant screening processes have put at risk NIH’s ability to fund grants by the end of the fiscal year.

What Bhattacharya said

In response to Representative DeLauro:

“Yes, we will spend the allocation on excellent sciences here. And scientists that are listening, don’t pay attention to the hype.”

“We did this last year. The colleagues that I have at the NIH that accomplished really a remarkable task of, even despite all the disruptions, getting grants out the door, spending the entire allocation of the fiscal year 2025 money...”

In response to Representative Hoyer:

“We spent all the entire allocation of funds for 2025. We have a hiring plan to make sure that we are even... We have all of the holes we identified unfilled this year, and we’re working as hard as we can to fill them.”

“The hiring plan that we have, I think whatever turbulence we had last year, is designed to fill that turbulence so that we don’t have the turbulence in the future.”

“And what he [NCI Director Letai] told me is that, first, that Reporter is lagging. It’s not true.”

In response to Representative Bice:

“I don’t see a bottleneck [in outgoing NIH grant awards] now... A lot of the concerns, it just seems like political noise to me. It’s not reality.”

What’s actually happening

Ongoing delays in fiscal year (FY) 2026 NIH funding have been widely tracked, even by NIH itself. NIH is lagging behind past years in both number and dollar amount of awards, with new awards particularly low compared to the past. By the end of February 2026, NIH had issued 66% fewer new awards compared to the same time point on average in 2021-2024. The cause of these delays is likely multifactorial, including the 43-day shutdown; delays in apportionment of the NIH budget by the Office of Management and Budget; cumbersome, unnecessary, and discriminatory grant screening processes; and staff shortages.

Leadership from one NIH institute estimates it has less than half of the workers it needs to process grants, projecting it could leave up to $500 million of congressionally appropriated funding on the table. The shortage of grants management specialists (the staff who process grant awards) is so substantial that some institutes have asked staff scientists, fellows/students, and program officers to volunteer to temporarily transition to grants management roles, without appropriate consideration of training needs or previously assigned work (personal communication from NIH staff).

As a result of probationary terminations, reductions in force, incentivized retirements, and staff resigning in protest rather than cross ethical and legal boundaries, NIH has lost more than 4,200 staff (~20%) since January 2025. While the administration finally lifted the lengthy hiring freeze, progress in hiring has been slow. Staff inside NIH report difficulty hiring staff, as many scientists remain reluctant to transition to the Federal government, when administration leaders have disclosed their intention to traumatize staff and employees who have questioned Bhattacharya’s leadership, such as Jeanne Marrazzo and Jenna Norton, have been removed from their roles.

NIH workforce changes over time

Figure credit: Office of Personnel Management Federal Workforce Data: https://data.opm.gov/explore-data/analytics/workforce-changes

Instead of addressing the Representatives’ legitimate concerns about the slow progress of 2026 awards, Bhattacharya:

• Attempted to undermine the concern, falsely claiming that Reporter (NIH’s public repository of NIH-funded research) is substantially delayed. While Reporter does have a 7-10 day delay, this does not come close to accounting for how far behind the NIH is in terms of awards in FY26 compared to FY24.

• Repeatedly highlighted that FY25 funds were fully obligated without acknowledging this was accomplished through substantially increased use of multiyear funding (MYF). Multiyear funded grants obligate a larger portion of the given year’s budget and reduce the number of new awards NIH can fund, leaving excellent science unfunded.

• Expressed confidence that his demoralized, overworked and disrespected staff will get the job done. He highlights that NIH successfully obligated its funding in FY25 “despite all the disruptions” without taking any ownership for those disruptions, which continued under his leadership. In FY25, to overcome staff shortages and fully obligate the budget, NIH staff had to work long hours on evenings and weekends without overtime pay. But as NIH and Administration leadership continue to further slow grant award progress through apportionment delays and unnecessary and discriminatory grant screening processes, leadership may find it increasingly difficult to motivate such unacknowledged overtime among their staff.

What you can do

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• Stay tuned for our next post in this fact check series on how the rapid transition to multiyear funding severely limits NIH's ability to fund new research.

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