Rather than funding new grants, most of the fiscal stimulus to NIH will be going to grants that have already been reviewed. From Science Insider:
The National Institutes of Health will dedicate most of its $8.2 billion for research from the economic stimulus bill to funding grant applications it has already received and to supplementing existing grants. A smaller amount, on the order of $100 million to $200 million, will go to new grant applications it receives in the coming months.
...Because NIH has to spend the stimulus money within those 2 years, it is under pressure to start sending money to grantees as soon as possible. That's why, Kington said, it will not issue a massive call for new applications. Instead, it will mainly look to add money to existing grants and to fund grant applications it has already received and peer reviewed.
Hope you all submitted an R01 last year otherwise this windfall is not for you.
I wonder what this will do to the funding line in the coming two years. Presumably, the baseline funding for NIH provided through the HHS budget will be relatively stable -- because Congress will assume that we are already flush. Will this mean that the funding lines in the coming two years will be the about as strict as they were last year? Is it reasonable to expect Congress to increase the NIH HHS budget right after they gave us $8.5 billion in stimulus?
Further, all of this money is likely to be accompanied by a huge amount of paperwork to prove that jobs have been created.
I have been told that paylines for full 4-5 year R01 grants will not loosen much, if at all, and that what they will do is offer some highly-scored grants outside the nominal payline two years of funding. The reason for this is that they cannot afford to incur out-year commitments to a fuckload of extra 4-5 year grants after the stimulus is gone.
Doesn't it depend on the institute within the NIH?