As the National of Institutes of Health's budget has flattened after a strong period of growth, anxious researchers have watched the success rates of their grant applications tumble. The success rates represent the percentage of research project grant applications that receive funding during a fiscal year. Between 1999 and 2003, NIH saw its budget double to about $27 billion. But as budget priorities shifted under the Bush administration, the NIH budget has stagnated and actually lost ground in real terms as increases have lagged inflation. In 2003, researchers overall enjoyed a success rate of about 30 percent, but that rate fell to 20 percent just three years later. This has left established researchers, who once could count on NIH dollars for their ongoing work, unsure of their future and scrambling to find alternative sources funding.