Despite a tight fiscal climate, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) seems to be faring well so far in the 2013 budget process. Yesterday, a Senate appropriations subcommittee recommended raising NIST's funding $75 million over the current 2012 budget to a total of $826 million, a roughly 10% increase. That figure, however, is below the Obama Administration's request of $857 million. For NIST's laboratory research programs, that means an extra $56 million to $623 million (the Administration had requested $648 million).
Though House of Representatives and Senate budget numbers are often at odds since they are controlled by different political parties, that may not be the case with the 2013 NIST budget. The Republican-controlled House Appropriations Committee today proposed nearly identical spending numbers to its Democrat-led Senate counterpart, boosting the agency's overall budget by $79 million, to $830 million.
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