A little more than a year ago, in the wake of congressional approval of the fiscal year 2005 spending bill, US Office of Science director Raymond Orbach was upbeat. His office within the Department of Energy had received a 4.3% increase in R&D money and Orbach was widely regarded as the big winner in a federal science budget that was mostly flat. The good times were short-lived, however.
This year, as the FY 2006 federal budget numbers are finalized, the only solace Orbach can take is that his office, with a 0.9% increase, did a little better than DOE as a whole, which received a 0.5% cut. And even that small comfort may fade if Congress applies an across-the-board 2% rescission to the entire federal budget. Such a rescission is a strong possibility as Congress struggles to find ways to pay for the multi-billion-dollar reconstruction costs of Katrina and the...
