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H.R. 1 - Recovery and Reinvestment

By catdynamics on January 24, 2009.

"Making supplemental appropriations for job preservation and creation, infrastructure investment, energy efficiency and science..."

So, the supplemental funding bill is moving through the House committee in sub-sections as different "Titles" of it are processed through the political sausage factory.
It is "House Resolution 1" - which is a statement on its priority level.

Huffington Post very kindly put up a pdf - all 647 seven pages.

Science is in Title III - starting page 48.
What have we got?

  • NASA: $400M for science - at least $250M of which to accelerate climate research missions; $150M for Aeronautics; $50M for weather repairs
  • NSF: SCORE! - $2,500M for research.
    At least $300M for MRI
    $200M for academic facilities modernization.
    Additional $100M Education.
    Additional $400M for Major Equipment and Facilities already approved.

    This is a shitload of cash for PI programs, centers and such.
    It rapidly accelerates the existing pipeline of approved major projects (like National Earth Observatory, ALMA, Advanced Solar Telescope and Advanced LIGO).
    Be a healthy round for MRI requests as well.
    This is for current year funding - through Sep 2009 - grants already applied for and under review!

  • DoE: $18,500M for energy efficiency and renewables. This year!
    Includes $1000M for advanced batteries and $4,500M for grid infrastructure!
    $2000M for science, including $400M for ARPA.
    At least $100M for advanced scientific computing.
  • NOAA: scores - $400M for operations (habitat restoration/mitigation); $600M for satellite development, including $140M for climate modeling!
  • NIST gets $100M for "science research" plus $300M for infrastructure
  • $6000M for Higher Education Modernization/Repair.
  • CDC - $462M - curiously precise figure.
  • NIH: $1,500M for grants for non-Federal facilities renovation?
    Plus $1,500M for grants, half held back for next year.
    Plus $500M for repairs and improvements.
    Curious - they're spreading the grants out a lot more than the NSF boost, but putting a lot of money into renovation and upgrades both within NIH and for universities.

Hm, there's also a chunk of funding for Army Corp of Engineers for flood control...

NASA comes out really badly, relatively speaking - the boost to climate science is great, but nothing for general science or space exploration suggests either the NASA review revealed serious concerns, or there are fundamental policy issues to be decided for NASA.

The NSF grants funding boost is almost too much, but we'll take it.

Now we have to hope the White House both throws some weight onto this to expedite passage, AND to limit horse trading and cutting out of stuff like science for more porcine State level funding.

Be an interesting few weeks.

PS: apparentl the Senate version basically takes a billion from NSF and gives it to NASA for "science" - how much would actually go to exploration is an interesting question.
This will be reconciled through some opaque mini-max scheme of course.

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I gather that there are a number of issues involving the NASA administration. Without an advocate for the agency and a clear set of priorities, they are suffering at some level. That said, the climate change science at NASA was a NAS recommendation from years ago which was never funded.

The NSF says that they maybe funding a huge fraction of this years MRI programs. Locally, a lot of folks were relieved.

Yeah, that kinda sucks. On the other hand NASA PI grant round is pretty much finished, and ROSES09 isn't out yet.

The MRI thing is kinda annoying, the odds in that program are usually so poor that some of us don't bother putting proposals in, just not worth the effort given probable benefit; so having the odds change a lot a posteriori is kinda annoying.
On the other hand, the people who really NEEDED MRI stuff probably put in proposals and will be rewarded.

So, I suppose it averages out.

Reading through the White House's bullet-point summary of the stimulus, it claims that the package will triple the number of graduate and undergraduate fellowships. Assuming that NSF funding doesn't get nerfed in the final bill, will this tripling apply to the current fellowship season?

By Andrew Shevchuk (not verified) on 28 Jan 2009 #permalink

My understanding is that, yes, the funding is to be pushed out the door now - allocation within 4 months and money out the door by Sep 30.
Good year to apply for national fellowships, maybe, as it turns out.
Basically anything to keep people in higher ed and off the job market for a while will help.