Budget Agreement Boosts US Science (sciencemag.org)

sciencehabit writes: The National Institutes of Health (NIH) leads the way among U.S science agencies getting increases in the final 2016 spending bill released today. NIH is the winner in absolute dollars. It gets a bump of $2 billion, or 6.6%, from its current budget of $30.1 billion. Spending on science programs at NASA would grow by 6.6%, to $5.6 billion, and rise by 5.6% in the Department of Energy's (DOE's) Office of Science, to $5.35 billion. The National Science Foundation would receive an additional $119 million, or 1.6%, to $7.46 billion, and the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy would get a 6% boost, to $291 million. NASA in particular got great allocations for planetary science and commercial crew.

Comments

This is agreed by Obama, Democrats and Republicans

[raymorris]

This budget has been agreed to by Obama and the Republican leadership in Congress, including Paul Ryan, and Congressional Democrats have expressed approval and talked about their "wins".

Obama likes it because they put off paying for Obamacare another couple of years. The taxes on health insurance and medical equipment will be delayed until after the election and 2020, respectively.

NASA budget is mostly good news...

[Rei]

... except for two things:

1) The giant waste of money known as the SLS/Space Launch System, whose budget request was a huge 1,3 billion for this year, was instead given 2 billion. Congress clearly likes flushing money down the toilet.

2) The STMD/Space Technology Mission Directorate has been having its budget cut each year, and while it got a nominal rise this year, it was tasked with taking over RESTORE-L from the ISS's budget, so it's yet another negative. STMD is the branch which develops and tests new technologies that have the potential to make spaceflight cheaper and safer.

That said, everything else looks good. Commercial crew is fully funded. Planetary science was increased, meaning that they're not going to have to cut any of their ongoing missions as they would have had to in the president's budget, plutonium production is fully funded, etc - and of course the big Europa mission is on coursse. Even earth science got a boost, which surprises me given the composition of the current US congress.

NIH increase == keep the lights on

[damn_registrars]

The NIH increase is not enough to add radical new initiatives. In fact, most funded researchers will be lucky if the increase even results in them getting their full requested budget. Many researchers will likely still see overall decreases, while their institutions will likely ask for more funds to cover expenses (such as electricity, gas, space, water, etc). It's better than nothing, but it's not really much of something, either.

If we want to be a competitive nation in terms of scientific research we need to at least fund the NIH enough to meet operating expense increases so researchers can do work and get paid at (or slightly above, if their lucky) the levels of janitors.

Re:NIH increase == keep the lights on

[damn_registrars]

If a decade after a huge budget increase, maintaining that level of high spending is considered "keeping the lights on," then it's no wonder we have a massive budget deficit.

You're not seeing the forest for the trees, here. The proper way to think about the budget for a lab is as the budget for a small business. You might be able to come up with an exception but I can not imagine a business anywhere in this country that is operating on the same budget they had 10 years ago and seeing the same margins. Literally everything costs more now than it did a decade ago; we pay more for electricity, we pay more for heat and water, we pay more for space. Even if the PI doesn't take a raise - or even cuts their salary - they still have increasing expenses to meet. At most institutions the grad students - even though they make less than janitors - do get annual raises, so that expense has to be met some how as well.

Perhaps NIH should have its budget reduced to Clinton-era levels for one year so they can once again appreciate just how much more money they've been receiving.

If your goal is to encourage the best scientists in the country to leave for other countries and never return, you may well be able to accomplish that with that idea. If your goal is to get good research and rock-bottom prices, you won't get that. There is a certain point where labs simply fold due to lack of funding, and it often has little - if anything - to do with their productivity.