FINDINGS.

SEC. 302. FINDINGS. Congress finds that— (1) the National Institutes of Health is the principal source of Federal funding for medical research at universities and other research institutions in the United States; (2) the National Institutes of Health has received a substantial increase in research funding from Congress for the purpose of expanding the national investment of the United States in behavioral and biomedical research; (3) the infrastructure of our research institutions is central to the continued leadership of the United States in medical research; (4) as Congress increases the investment in cutting-edge basic and clinical research, it is critical that Congress also examine the current quality of the laboratories and buildings where research is being conducted, as well as the quality of laboratory equipment used in research; (5) many of the research facilities and laboratories in the United States are outdated and inadequate; (6) the National Science Foundation found, in a 1998 report on the status of biomedical research facilities, that over 60 percent of research-performing institutions indicated that they had an inadequate amount of medical research space; (7) the National Science Foundation reports that academic institutions have deferred nearly $11,000,000,000 in renovation and construction projects because of a lack of funds; and (8) future increases in Federal funding for the National Institutes of Health must include increased support for the renovation and construction of extramural research facilities in the United States and the purchase of state-of-the-art laboratory instrumentation.