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

Re:Great!

[Anonymous Coward]

Now all they need to do is pass the thing. Does anyone know what kind of poison pill has been inserted yet, which will cause somebody to get off the boat and sink it? We all know there is one...

They actually somewhat compromised, hoping Obama will sign the damn thing.

Republicans gave up defunding Planned Parenthood.
Democrats pulled out proposed additional gun control.
Republicans gave in on not adding vetting for Syrian refugees.
Possibly some others.

Sounds like they actually want this passed.

I'm sure it's full of pork, but aren't they all.

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.

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.