It doesn't work like that. NIH grants are awarded in terms of direct costs, and indirect costs come on top of that. If you have a $500k/year grant and your uni

It doesn't work like that. NIH grants are awarded in terms of direct costs, and indirect costs come on top of that. If you have a $500k/year grant and your university has negotiated 69% overhead rate, NIH pays the university $845k/year. If the overhead rate is slashed to 15%, the university gets $575k/year. The remaining $270k/year probably won't be spent on anything, as the entire point is supposed to be cutting government spending.