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FY08 Supplemental Appropriation Includes $337.5M in Federal Science Funding
On Monday, President Bush signed the $161.8 billion supplemental appropriations bill for the current fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30, 2008. Though the appropriation primarily provides funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the bill also includes almost $3.6 billion in non-war funding. Of this, $400 million was approved for U.S. science programs. The new funding will support programs that were originally authorized by the America COMPETES Act and will help several energy-related national laboratories avoid layoffs anticipated due to previous budget cuts.
The $400 million in science spending will be divided among the major science agencies, including:
- $150 million for the National Institutes for Health (NIH), to be merged into current NIH spending and divided proportionally among the institutes, centers and common fund for FY 2008;
- $62.5 million for the Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science, which a House Rules Committee explanatory statement stipulated should be used to end any layoffs due to budgetary constraints;
- $62.5 million for the National Science Foundation (NSF), including $22.5 million for research and related activities, and $40 million for Education and Human Resources; and,
- $62.5 million for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
An earlier version of the bill would have provided a total of $1.2 billion for the agencies, though it was abandoned when the president indicated that he would veto such a bill.
An additional $387 million will fund research, development, testing and evaluation within the military services and the Department of Defense (DoD).
Last December, nearly $1 billion in research funding for the physical sciences was eliminated between the initial 2008 budget request and the eventual passage of the Omnibus spending bill. The cuts were expected to lead to layoffs at national laboratories around the country, including Los Alamos National Laboratory, which had initiated a plan to reduce its staff by 500 to 700 workers (see the Dec. 12, 2007 issue of the Digest). Layoffs also have occurred at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, though the new funding may lead to rehires. In the short term, the appropriation should limit staff reductions, at least until the passage of the 2009 budget.
More information, including the full text of H.R. 2642, is available at: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d110:h.r.02642: