Capping NIH overhead at 15% is unrealistic and would severely harm U.S. biomedical research. Overhead covers essential costs like infrastructure, compliance, and personnel—without it, research quality and productivity would decline. Most institutions and national labs operate with ~100% overhead, making a 15% cap unsustainable.

Legally, this move would violate existing contracts and congressional appropriations, leading to significant challenges. Economically, it would drive top scientists out of the U.S., weaken innovation, and benefit global competitors. If enforced, this policy could cost the U.S. far more in lost research and economic impact than any savings it aims to achieve.

John Tainer "Near term, I guess that a 15% enforced overhead will mean the loss of our top scientists."

As far as I can find data, while not that different from foundations in the US (like Gates Foundation) but the rate indeed seems a bit low by the EU funds standards. The ones that I could quickly find allocated around 25% for overhead (found between 15%-30%). Are you certain that this difference is going to make people like you flood universities all around Europe? (there aren't many places where high number of US scholars could realistically go)

"Most companies estimate their overhead on research as ~100%"

Dunno... then why with grant overheads around ~25% universities in Poland behave as if those grants had been a really good business for university? Based on incentive structure created there would possible to get extra bonus based on value of grant obtained or in evaluation / promotion grants are explicitly counted as another achievement, independently from publications that had been supposed to be the end product of such grant research. (I mean if at that level the university would be burning money from grants it would discourage from obtaining them; if that was around break even point, they wouldn't care)

From a principal investigator's point of view, not having sufficient overhead for a grant forces you to take funds out of your core budget, which is typically already highly restricted to begin with. So yes, the limit on overhead will drive some researchers out of the field The same is true for the universities and other sources which may well not encourage grants that they cannot afford to support.

You don’t just “get” a given level of overhead costs, you have to negotiate them. Setting an arbitrary low number doesn’t help anyone.

For me and I bet some others too, it can be very hard to understand so-called indirect or overhead costs. Perhaps it is useful to consider an analogy. Let’s consider scientists doing war on cancer research in the lab in comparison to a military army. An army is most certainly going to want to put as much of its resources as possible into winning battles and conflicts. It will not wish to inflate overhead costs as the success of the military effort is literally a matter of life and death. So how much of the cost for a war on cancer or a military effort comes from direct cancer researcher or direct miitary war efforts. For advanced science or advanced military, it is in fact a lcw percentage of the costs that are for the soldiers in the lab or battlefield.

The direct military war efforts compared to "overhead" in particular will have a relatively small portion (~10-20%) of the overall cost. The majority of expenses will concern infrastructure, maintenance, logistics, equipment, technology, support, etc. Thus overhead or indirect costs of 100% may seem high for science but would in practice be impossibly low for the focused military effort, which will be expected to require costs 5 to 10 times higher than the direct costs. So are 60% or even 100% overhead costs for scientific research that require controlled building environments and lots of complex infrastructure too high or possibly too low?

I guess a military with a 100% overhead instead of the 1000% they likely need would lose all its battles, so the military as well as the country might cease to exist. I guess researchers given 15% overhead would find themselves working in impossible conditions with inadequate support making them lose productivity and their ability to compete for meaningful support. So I guess that their biomedical research may case to exist.

A 15% overhead cap on NIH grants would likely be disastrous for U.S. biomedical research. The actual costs of compliance, infrastructure, and administration far exceed this percentage, and forcing such a cap would cripple research institutions, drive top scientists elsewhere, and weaken U.S. innovation.I think ,In the long run, it would cost the U.S. far more in lost advancements and economic impact than it would save.

It is not a good idea because the University will not be able to cover it, and they will charge the direct cost, which will be horrible for investigators.