Despite President Obama’s promise to freeze discretionary spending in his State of the Union speech last night, research advocacy organizations called on the White House today to increase the US National Institutes of Health’s 2011 budget by billions of dollars.

The NIH’s current budget sits at $31 billion — a 1.4% increase from last year. But that’s doesn’t count the $10.4 billion in stimulus money that Congress appropriated over two years, which will add another $4 billion into 2010 research grants plus more funds for infrastructure.

Research!America urged the president to keep the NIH budget at that post-stimulus level, and recommended that $35 billion be set aside for the 2011 budget — a 13% increase from 2010.

The Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) is calling for an even bigger shot in the arm — a 19% increase, to $37 billion. FASEB president Mark Lively told reporters that this represented a much more modest boost, only a couple percentage points above biomedical inflation, if you take into account the stimulus windfall.

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