Report from Capitol Hill: The Outlook for Science Funding

On the surface, the Republican takeover of the U.S. House of Representatives after the November 4^th elections appears to mean leaner years ahead for investments in research and development (R&D). House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) is vowing to reduce spending to Fiscal Year (FY) 2008 levels. If legislation to do that is enacted, the National Science Foundation (NSF) would suffer an 11 percent budget cut from its FY 2010 budget, and there would also be reductions of more than 14 percent to the budgets of the Department of Energy's (DOE) Office of Science and National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).