Rep. Jake Auchincloss, representing Massachusetts’ 4th district in the U.S. Congress, recently addressed concerns about the potential impact of a policy change on Massachusetts’ economy through a series of tweets. His statements focused on the implications of reducing the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) indirect cost recovery rate for grants.
On February 10, 2025, Rep. Auchincloss tweeted about the significance of Massachusetts’ education and medical sectors to its economy. He warned that “the reduction of the NIH’s indirect cost recovery rate to 15% of a grant total would disrupt Massachusetts’ biomedical success without increasing R&D nationally.”
In another tweet posted shortly after, he emphasized that “overhead is well more than 15% of the cost of that research: facilities, IT, and support personnel are essential & expensive.” This statement highlights his concern over funding necessary operational costs associated with research.
Further elaborating on February 10, Rep. Auchincloss noted that “the net result of a 15% indirect cap would be that NIH grants become much more expensive to accept because of the unfunded overhead associated with them.” He described this policy as effectively imposing a financial burden on Massachusetts’ educational and medical sectors amounting to approximately $2 billion.
