The US government will be running for the next 9 months as a result of the new spending bill. Basic research was done by lawmakers. Although they wanted to increase the defense budget, they weren't able to give a big boost to the National Science Foundation.
The omnibus spending bill is expected to be signed into law by the end of the week and allow agencies to keep doing business at current spending levels.
The huge bill was the result of months of negotiations between the House of Representatives and the Senate.
The budget of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke will increase by 5.6% to $47.5 billion. The administration requested only a small increase. A boost of at least 3.8% would be given to each institute.
The National Cancer Institute will get an additional $150 million. There will be a $226 million increase in research on Alzheimer's disease. HIV/AIDs research is one of the areas tagged for an increase.
The final bill does not contain controversial language that would have barred the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institute of Health from funding research in China and three other countries. The proposed ban, which would have shut off millions of dollars in grants, grew out of allegations from some Republican lawmakers that the COVID-19 Pandemic was the result of a lab leak.
The Undiagnosed Diseases Network, which studies rare mystery diseases, has $18 million in the bill. The program was going to get about $5 million in support in the next five years.
The Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health received a 50% increase in funding. The new agency received $1 billion this year, which was less than the $5 billion request by Biden. The bill states that ARPA-H's headquarters and offices can't be located on anyNIH campuses because of concerns that it won't be sufficiently independent.
Legislators came up with a way to give more money to the National Science Foundation. The agency is being asked to think about ways to make the grantmaking process more fair to those who have faced longer odds in the competition for funding.
The $1 billion in new money was made possible by the fact that it falls outside the overall budget cap set by lawmakers and doesn't have to be offset. It is an approach that Congress has used many times to pay for pressing national needs. It may be the first time that it has been used in a significant way.
The mechanism allows Congress to fulfill its promise to double the budget of the National Science Foundation in five years. The act spent at Biden's requested level of $10.4 billion, but did not appropriate. Congress fudged by stretching the $1 billion in new spending over two years. Real money isn't just a higher authorized level of spending.
Legislators wrote a check. They told the agency that it needed to remove any biases in the way it reviews proposals and awards grants. Congress requested a report next summer on the option of adopting institution-blind, investigator-blind, and dual-anonymous process for merit review of proposals, with a focus on the fairness of the process faced by all applicants.
The power dynamic between senior investigators and their students can lead to harassment, according to lawmakers. Legislators say that early-career scientists need safe places to voice their concerns.
According to an earlier version of the spending bill approved by the House of Representatives, those tensions can damage the science, undermine research security, and jeopardize the continued flow of foreign talent into the United States. The House panel noted that the US should remain a destination for scientific research and to address concerns about power relationships.
Lawmakers gave NASA $25.4 billion, up from this year's levels. The science division of NASA will get more money this year than in the previous year.
BrittanyWebster is the science policy and government relations manager at the American Geophysical Union. It makes it difficult for all of our priorities. The final number for NASA science was lower than what the House and Senate panels had proposed. Where did we fall short in our efforts?
The American Astronomical Society's acting director was disappointed. There wasn't much support for science.
After the CHIPS and Science Act called for broad spending increases across science, NASA science struggled to keep up with other agencies. He says that there is a zero-sum trade off. NASA seems to be ignored when it comes to science.
Earth science gets the largest boost with a rise of 6%. "That's encouraging." Plans for the first four satellites in the Earth System Observatory were requested by lawmakers. Lawmakers want the agency to hold a competition to choose the missions, to encourage thrift and efficiency, and to take advantage of university expertise. NASA usually assigns its flagship missions.
There is $8 million for wildfire detection technologies in the bill. It is a new thing. There was no mention of the Earth Information Center, a NASA proposal to deliver climate and other data to the public.
The most well-funded science division is planetary science. It received $3.2 billion, a 3% increase from this year, and more than the Biden administration requested. That is ahistorical high for the program. That is wonderful and welcome. There isn't much to complain about for the planetary sciences.
$90 million was given to the division to continue development of the Near- Earth Object Surveyor mission, which can spot asteroids as small as 30 meters across. The mission was first proposed in 2006 and is now planned for a 2028 launch. The agency failed to meet a congressional mandate to detect 90 percent of objects larger than 140 meters.
The appropriation of $823 million for Mars Sample Return was good news for the project. He says that is a big deal. It is getting the funding it needs at an early stage to move it forward.
The astrophysics division was funded at less than it was this year. The cut feels like we are being punished for our success. The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope was given $482 million by lawmakers. The Roman telescope will look for clues to dark matter and dark energy by studying the expansion of the universe.
It looks like lawmakers have accepted the cancellation of the SOFIA, which was a jumbo jet that carried a telescope. The annual operating costs of SOFIA were nearly as high as the Hubble Space Telescope. Astronomers said in their decadal survey that the mission should end. Congress saved SOFIA many times. Lawmakers gave the mission $30 million for an "orderly closeout" despite the jet flying on its last operational mission in September.
The money isn't wasted because there is still a lot of work to be done. She was disappointed that the savings from SOFIA weren't applied to other projects.
The smallest of NASA's science divisions was awarded $805 million, a 3% increase over the previous year.
Basic research supported by DOE's Office of Science gets an 8.4% budget boost to $8.1 billion, more than twice the increase requested by the Biden administration.
The budget priorities of the Biden administration were closely watched by legislators. 15 construction projects in the Office of Science are funded by the bill. The US contribution to the ITER fusion experiment is one of the projects. There are eleven projects that get exactly what the DOE asked for. The Office of Science was given an additional 1.55 billion dollars by the Inflation Reduction Act, which it has already distributed.
Construction spending increased just 0.9% compared to last year. Research grants and activities make up most of the budget increase. The operation of existing facilities is subject to congressional scrutiny. Researchers worry that increases in construction come at the expense of doing science.
The basic energy sciences program received a 12% increase in funding. Research in fusion energy sciences gets a boost of $510 million. Research in high energy physics increased by 7.2% to $868 million and research in nuclear physics increased by 6.6% to $755 million.
The research budget for advanced scientific computing is going to go up. The legislation orders funding for the three U.S. national laboratories where exascale systems are being developed.
The Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy is part of the DOE. It's 4.4% more than last year, but less than the $700 million requested.
The growth of applied research in energy efficiency and renewable energy will be less than the requested $4.109 billion. $316 million in funding for producing and using hydrogen for transportation and heavy industry is included in the increases. There are $250 million for batteries for electric vehicles and $187 million for photovoltaic technologies.
The bill removes a requirement that drugs be tested in animals in order to get FDA approval. The new language was supported by two senators.
The Public Health Service Act gives the FDA authority to approve new medicines that have not been tested in animals. Organ chips, cell-based assays, computer modeling, and bioprinters are listed in the bill.
Kathy Guillermo, senior vice president at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, is one of the groups that pushed for the change. Patients are not served by forcing pharmaceutical companies to use animal tests. Millions of animals are going to die because of it.
The budget for NIST's science and technical research and services will increase. Half of the $103 million increase will be spent on pet projects that aren't part of the agency's research strategy. Earmarks will make up 25% of NIST's total budget in the next five years. The once-outlawed practice, which benefits hundreds of universities as well as local and state entities, was resumed by Congress last year.
Most of the increases in funding are for research. There is an increase of $3 million to complete a study on the risks to first responders of personal protective equipment and the interface between urban areas and wildlands. The NIST needs to establish a new center of excellence to produce new climate change measurement technologies.
The agency received 1.5 billion dollars this fiscal year, a 7% increase over the previous year. The biggest boost goes to science. The West Coast earthquake alert system was included within the natural hazard program. A $5 million grant from the US Geological Survey will be used to establish a center to study the entire water cycle within the mountains and shorelines.
The EPA's Science and Technology account gets a 7 percent boost, keeping up with inflation, and no major changes to funding levels for clean air and pesticides. The appropriators want to know more about the agency's plans for monitoring and analyzing trends in air quality. Congress directed $2 million for research to measure methane released from landfills. $3 million is earmarked for the development of an integrated greenhouse gas database.
The National Institute of Food and Agriculture has only received a 4% increase to its extramural research program. It will reach $1 billion by the end of the year. Lawmakers increased the USDA's competitive grants account by 2%, to a total of $450 million.
The budget for the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration would grow by less than Biden asked for. The climate science budget would increase. The extra money would help fund a $12 million initiative to study water in the western United States and a $7 million effort to understand the interplay of weather and wildfires.
The current and programs account has $330 million and the periodic censuses and programs account has $1.155 billion. It is $20 million below the president's request and what a House panel had adopted, which is a big disappointment to the statistical community.
According to Howard Fienberg, a co-leader of the advocacy group the Census Project, the Census Bureau still needs a lot more resources to keep up with the American Community Survey. The White House and Congress seem to forget that a lot of the research and development for the 2030 census needs to be done early in the decade. Jeffrey Mervis said that small amounts can save a lot of money.
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