The Pentagon and the National Institutes of Health have signed an agreement to collaborate on biodefense and pandemic preparedness, drawing criticism from Democrats on Capitol Hill who warned that the plan could allow the Defense Department to go around Congress and gain access to billions of dollars meant for infectious disease research.
The agreement, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times, is focused on chemical and biological defense research. It does not specify a dollar figure for the partnership or which research projects would be included, but people familiar with it who spoke on the condition of anonymity said it could involve as much as $2 billion from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, about a third of the agency’s budget.
Congressional Democrats, who publicized the agreement, said they feared it would allow Pentagon officials to spend money lawmakers had allocated for programs at the health agency on their own priorities instead. The Trump administration has repeatedly found ways to go around Congress on spending, including canceling federal grants. It has also used similar arrangements, known as interagency agreements, to try to gut the Education Department by subcontracting its functions out to other departments.
“The interagency agreement needs to be terminated immediately,” said Representative Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee. “These funds were provided for lifesaving medical research, not as extra money for the Department of Defense.”
Senator Patty Murray of Washington, the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, accused the Defense Department of “trying to rob N.I.H. of billions of dollars that Congress provided for medical research so that it can pad the Pentagon’s budget.”
Trump administration officials denied that was the case.
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, the N.I.H. director, defended the agreement on Friday, writing on social media that “far from siphoning money away from research, this partnership between @NIH and @DeptofWar focuses on research projects that will drive discoveries to improve the health of American citizens and members of the military.”
“Led by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, all work will be 100% aligned with our public health mission,” Mr. Bhattacharya wrote.
Kush Desai, a White House spokesman, said on social media that “the NIH is not transferring any money to the Pentagon. This is a project-by-project research partnership.” He accused Ms. DeLauro of twisting facts about the arrangement to score “political points.”
The Pentagon did not respond to a request for comment.
The agreement arrives at a moment of turbulence and uncertainty at the N.I.A.I.D., which has lost many of its longtime leaders and is undergoing major strategic shifts under the Trump administration. The agency is veering away from biodefense and pandemic preparedness research that was once one of its three core areas of focus.
In the journal Nature Medicine this January, N.I.H. leaders set out a new vision for the infectious disease institute, arguing that the agency’s work on pandemic preparedness “clearly neither prevented the pandemic nor prevented Americans from experiencing among the highest levels of all-cause excess mortality in the developed world during that time.”
The N.I.A.I.D. played a leading role in the scientific response to the pandemic, and its longtime director, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, was the public face of many pandemic policies. The agency was instrumental in the rapid development of vaccines credited with saving millions of lives, but have since become a political lightning rod.
In the past, about a third of the N.I.A.I.D.’s roughly $6.6 billion budget has been allocated for biodefense and emerging pathogen research. But in a recent strategic plan, the word “biodefense” was absent.
The agreement was signed by Dr. Bhattacharya and Dr. Robert Kadlec at the Defense Department. Dr. Kadlec previously served as assistant secretary for preparedness and response at the Department of Health and Human Services and played a central role in Operation Warp Speed, the federal government’s effort to rapidly develop vaccines and therapeutics against Covid-19.
A spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Human Services, Madeline Meeker, said in a statement that potential collaborations could “support the development of medical technologies, such as therapeutics, diagnostics and personal protective equipment, to protect against infectious diseases and other health risks that Americans face,” citing the response to the Ebola outbreak as an example.
It comes as the Pentagon has sought to significantly increase its budget. The administration has requested $1.5 trillion, including a $350 billion tranche of funding passed through the partisan reconciliation process.
Both requests are stalled on Capitol Hill. Democrats opposed to the war in Iran have refused to provide more funding to the Pentagon through the bipartisan appropriations process, and Senate Republicans remain divided over the budget plan needed to start the reconciliation process.
Congressional Republicans last year included $150 billion in additional funding for the Pentagon in their major tax and spending cuts legislation.
Helene Cooper contributed reporting.
