Raise or remove the NIH cap on grad student funding

Hello, I am a graduate student at the University of California, San Diego. I write to encourage you to raise or remove the NIH “cap” that limits the amount of NIH grants that may go towards the support of graduate students. Currently, there is an NIH “cap gap” – a difference between the amount NIH allows a grant to support a student with (NRSA Postdoc Level 0 stipend, $56,484 this year) and how much it really costs to fully support a student (which will soon be $60-70K in the University of California). I encourage you to change this policy, which limits scientific innovation and creates hardship for graduate students, postdocs, and research scientists.