NIH recently outlined its commitment to basic research in a letter published in Science in March 2016 with Francis Collins as the first author. The letter points out that the NIH is “particularly concerned that misperceptions about NIH's priorities and interests may be causing investigators to submit fewer basic research applications.” As an example, they refer to an NIH institute in which the number of awards for basic research decreased in recent years. “This decrease in awards was not a consequence of peer review given that basic grant applications actually did substantially better in review than applied research proposals. Instead, the major driver of this decline was a decrease in the number of fundamental basic research applications submitted.”
The full text is found at http://science.sciencemag.org/content/351/6280/1405.1