As the former chairman of the Senate funding committee for health research, I worked closely with the Trump administration on health research funding before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. I saw firsthand how President Donald Trump showed the world that the United States was No. 1 in health research through groundbreaking initiatives such as Operation Warp Speed and the RADx testing program. Now, we have an opportunity to build on that success with smart reforms that maintain America’s research leadership while ensuring transparency for taxpayers.
Cutting-edge research — from biomedical research to defense and artificial intelligence — is key to securing our competitive edge against China and other nations that seek to eclipse U.S. dominance. It takes investment in people and facilities to make research possible, and all research projects are not created equal.
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Albert Einstein is often credited with observing that “everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.” It’s important to apply that principle as we pursue solutions to modernize and improve how the government supports critical research at U.S. academic institutions.
Trump and his administration have correctly made the point that publicly funded research costs must be transparent and accountable. Everyone agrees that changes to indirect research cost reimbursements — the public funding that helps cover costs necessary to conduct research — are coming. The question isn’t whether we’ll reform the system, it’s how we’ll do it.
To that end, research leaders from across the country have engaged in a carefully considered effort to propose a new framework — the financial accountability in research model — for recovering the costs that academic institutions incur when performing federally funded research. I join the supporters who believe this is the best method being discussed for covering and accounting for the resources necessary to perform world-leading research while providing greater accountability and transparency for American taxpayers.
Some have proposed simply capping all indirect costs at a specific amount, like 15% across the board. While that may cover some types of research, it would fall short for resource-intensive projects that need to be carefully protected, including research around complex biomedical questions or related to defense and national security.
The FAIR model, developed by the Joint Associations Group led by Trump’s former science adviser, Kelvin Droegemeier, offers a far better alternative that addresses long-standing concerns while preserving American research excellence. The FAIR model reflects input from scores of experts from across the research community, including those from private industry, nonprofit research foundations, and former Trump administration officials.
Together, they have developed a common-sense proposal that is more transparent and precise than either the current reimbursement system or an arbitrary single rate.
First and foremost, the FAIR model requires explicit accounting of support costs for each individual grant. All research projects incur necessary costs such as facilities, federally mandated compliance, oversight, and reporting. Under the current system, those costs are charged at the same rate despite widely varying costs associated with different types of research. For instance, the costs of research involving human subjects or sensitive national security issues are vastly higher than those for a study in theoretical mathematics. The FAIR model tailors support costs to each research project, allowing researchers, institutions, lawmakers, and, most importantly, taxpayers, to understand the actual costs of a research project clearly.
Further, the FAIR model accommodates all types and sizes of institutions and all geographic locations, explicitly recognizing that personnel and facility costs vary by organization and location. Under the FAIR model, these necessary support costs would be clear and fully auditable.
In addition, the FAIR model offers options to smaller, more under-resourced research institutions that may not have the administrative infrastructure to support the extensive accounting required under the current system. Instead, it allows for detailed itemization (similar to your income taxes) for institutions or projects that make sense, and a simplified option (like the standard tax deduction) where that option is a better fit.
As Trump has made clear, the current system is indeed on its way out. We must now determine how we move forward without endangering the unique, successful partnership the government has with researchers — one that has advanced healthcare more in the last 25 years than in all time before, allowed for unparalleled breakthroughs under Trump’s leadership, and made the U.S. the undisputed world leader in research.
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The FAIR model represents the best opportunity to ensure the nation’s research enterprise continues to thrive while fulfilling the mission Trump has pursued since Day One: making government more transparent, accountable, and efficient.
The FAIR model approach meets Einstein’s standard — it is as simple as possible, but not simpler than possible.
Roy Blunt served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1997 to 2011 and the U.S. Senate from 2011 to 2023. He was chairman of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies.
