Bad budget news

Bad budget news in the pipeline for science

NASAwatch has the NASA budget summary

As you know, Bob, the US is already into fiscal year '08 but most of the bugdet bills have not yet been passed, and the government is operating under a continuous resolution (basically rolling over last years budget, pro-rated).

A reason the bills are not yet passed, and they must by by friday this week, or the government will shut down, is that President Bush has let it be known that he will veto any bill that goes over his proposed request to Congress.
Congress added $22 billion in discretionary spending to the various budget bills, they tried negotiating a $11 billion compromise, threatened to delete all the republican earmarks and pet projects to keep the total the same but fund the new stuff, and then, of course, they folded like a sodden old deck of cards.
So, the new omnibus spending bill has no additional funding and very little shuffling of funds relative to the President's proposed budget. Another power Congress has effectively surrendered, at least for now.

So... that means no major increase in science and research for next year.
So NASA growth is anemic, and the $1 billion the Senate had added to cover costs of post-Katrina repair and other disaster recovery is not in there.
So something will have to give, NASA does not have the money to do the science and exploration they proposed.

NSF funding will grow at something like inflation, rather than headed for doubling, which means the PI funding rounds will be very tight yet again and no major new initiatives are likely.

DoE science is also in trouble, and we won't talk about minor stuff like geoscie and environmental stuff, or the poor NIH.
Gritty details will emerge next weekin the new year, after AAS/APS/AGU etc staffers get back.

But, on the positive side, the Senate put in the $70 billion in "emergency appropriations" for the war, which is additional to the almost $500 billion DoD budget. And more than double the $30 billion the House had put in to keep the extra war funding going.

In the meantime, across the pond, you'll recall the UK is withdrawing from Gemini over $4 million pound per year subscription, and withdrawing or canceling several other physics projects and international collaborations.
But, the government did announce an open ended committment to bail out the "Northern Rock" bank, to the tune of 50 billion pounds.
Because, as you know Bob, investors who take risks on investments with high rates of returns must be protected from the risk they incurred...

At a conservative 4% per year return, those 50 billion pounds would return 2 billion pounds per year - the OST budget was 3.7 billion pounds last year, as I recall.