Federal R&D programs were spared major hits, and in some cases did quite well, under the last-minute spending agreement that was hammered out in April to avert a government shutdown. The accord reached between the Republican-led House of Representatives and President Obama nominally will reduce federal discretionary spending for fiscal year 2011 by $37.6 billion, compared with FY 2010 appropriations. The compromise measure signed into law all but erased many of the dramatic reductions to basic research that the House had demanded in H. R. 1, the version of the continuing resolution (CR) that it had passed in February.
But the final CR that Obama signed into law marks the end of the sizable growth in federal research programs that the president had pushed through during his first two years in office, mainly through the stimulus spending of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. With his FY 2011 budget request,...
