The spending panel in the House of Representatives has proposed billion-dollar cuts in the proposed budgets of the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Energy's Office of Science for this year as part of its plan to trim $35 billion from current domestic discretionary accounts. Other research agencies would also see their budgets slashed.
Today's announcement by the House Appropriations Committee would apply to the rest of the 2011 fiscal year and is based on President Barack Obama's request for 2011 that is still pending before Congress. It's in keeping with Republican promises to roll back federal spending to 2008 levels. The proposal doesn't actually do that, but leaders have said that they hope to accomplish the full $100 billion reduction by combining these cuts with additional reductions for 2012. The full House is expected to vote on the 2011 funding levels next week. But its fate is uncertain, as Democratic leaders in the Senate are likely to present their own spending plan.
The National Journal is reporting the following details of selected research agencies from this morning's meeting of the panel and the amount below their 2011 request:
- Office of Science under the energy and water spending bill, -$1.1B
- NIH , -$1B
- National Science Foundation, -$139M
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