The US government is slated to shut down by midnight tonight if lawmakers on Capitol Hill can’t reach a last-minute agreement on multi-billion dollar budget cuts. One key point of contention centers around a measure approved last month by House Republicans to trim $1.6 billion in funding for the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) for the rest of this fiscal year. In contrast, the Democrat-controlled Senate passed a bill that would keep the NIH’s $31.2 billion budget flat, while President Barack Obama proposed a $750 million boost for the agency next year.

As the nation eagerly awaits a resolution to the budget impasse, a new poll released this week shows that most Americans strongly support spending tax dollars on biomedical research. The 1,000-person survey, sponsored by the Alexandria, Virginia-based advocacy organization Research!America, found that 84% of respondents — who came from a broad swath of the political spectrum — think the government should play a role in health-related research; 61% also said that boosting investment in federally-funded research should be a national priority.

To read more about the case for supporting funding for the NIH, check out our exclusive interview from earlier this week with former Republican Congressman John Porter.