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UNITED STATES - JANUARY 27: Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., speaks during the news conference to unveil the Fifth Amendment Integrity Restoration Act (FAIR Act), legislation to 'protect the rights of property owners and restore the Fifth Amendment's role in civil forfeiture proceedings' on Tuesday, Jan. 27, 2015. (Photo By Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call) | Bill Clark via Getty Images

The following post first appeared on FactCheck.org.

Sen. Rand Paul made several misleading statements about the National Institutes of Health and some of the research that it funds.

Paul spoke at the American Spectator Annual Gala in Washington (at the 10:03 mark), and commented on how he has tried to point out potential areas where government spending could be reduced.

Paul, Feb. 11: Remember when we were talking about Ebola last year? Everybody was going crazy about Ebola, and theyre like, oh Republicans didnt spend enough at the NIH. And they didnt spend enough on infectious disease. Turns out, the budget had been going up for years and years at NIH, the budget had been going up for infectious disease. You know how much they spent on Ebola? One-40th of the budget was being spent on Ebola. But you know what we did discover? They spent a million dollars trying to determine whether male fruit flies like younger female fruit flies. I think we could have polled the audience and saved a million bucks.

Paul is wrong about the NIH budget increasing for years and years, even when using figures unadjusted for inflation. The budget was lower in raw dollars in 2014 and 2015 ($30.1 and $30.3 billion, respectively) than it was in 2010, when it reached a high of $31.2 billion. A spokesman from Pauls office sent us the unadjusted dollar amounts to explain the senators claim.

NIH, which is the primary funding source for basic science research in the United States, did see its budget increase dramatically from the mid-1990s, when it stood around $11 billion, through 2003, when it hit $27.2 billion. Since then, the budget has risen in small amounts some years in unadjusted dollars, and declined slightly in other years.

When inflation is taken into account, no increase in funding is evident in the last decade. The $27.2 billion in 2003 is equivalent to almost $35 billion in 2014 dollars, when the NIH budget was just over $30 billion. In other words, the NIH budget has actually decreased by almost $5 billion over the last decade in inflation-adjusted dollars.

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Rand Paul Misleads With Statements On NIH, Fruit Flies