Obama’s Budget Strong in Science Funding
Wired Science lists some of the things in Obama’s budget that are making scientists smile.
A $2.7 billion increase in the Environmental Protection Agency’s budget. That’s a 35 percent increase that will push the agency’s budget to $10.5 billion. The EPA also got $7 billion in the stimulus package.
The National Science Foundation, which builds the big, cool tools for American science, will get an 8.5 percent bump to its budget. Combined with the $3 billion it got stimulated with, it’ll have $10 billion to play with.
NASA will only get to tack $700 million onto its $18 billion budget from last year but they picked up an extra billion dollars in stimulus cash, too.
The Department of Energy raked in $39 billion from the stimulus package. In comparison, the $2.4 billion bump it would get from Obama’s budget isn’t much. More importantly, we don’t know how much more money the DOE’s Office of Science will get to add to its $4.8 billion budget. One interesting tidbit: the Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy, an energy research unit modeled on DARPA, finally got $400 million to start up. Former President Bush officially created ARPA-E last year, but it received no funding until the stimulus package.
Frank says: