From Fermilab Today’s November 9 Director’s Corner: With the changes in the Congress following the mid-term election last week, we have an increased sense of uncertainty regarding our funding for FY 2011 and FY 2012, and hence greater uncertainties for the programs we are embarked on. Not that we are strangers to uncertainty. Even before the election, we did not have a budget for FY 2011, the fiscal year that started more than a month ago. At least, however, the Appropriations Committees of both the House of Representatives and the Senate had marked the Energy and Water Development Appropriations bill, and in normal times we could guess roughly where we would end up. The entire federal government is currently funded under a Continuing Resolution (CR) at mostly the FY 2010 enacted levels (excluding Recovery Act funding) through December 3. The end-game strategy being devised by the current Congress will require at least one extension of the CR.
The situation is now very fluid and could take different paths. The current Congress could pass an omnibus appropriations bill in the lame duck session; however, such action is likely only if both Democrats and Republicans find common ground at a level of spending below the pending appropriations bills. The CR could be extended into next year so that the new Congress can rewrite the currently pending bills at reduced funding levels. Congress could pass the existing bills with a formula to reduce overall spending or continue to fund the government by CR at the FY 2010 level with increases for only a few key initiatives.
As a large number of new players joins the Congress, a period of learning and debate starts during which Members of Congress will reanalyze priorities and seek common ground. It is important for us at Fermilab and for the scientific community generally to describe the opportunities and the benefits that investments in science bring to the nation across so many domains. I know that you share my conviction that science and innovation are the fountains of future prosperity.
In the meantime, we must be extremely careful about our rate of expenditures. Clearly slowing down expenses incurs some penalty in the rate of progress of our program. If we don’t, however, we run the risk to be mismatched in funding for our programs in the second half of the year, requiring more disruptive adjustments later. It is important for all of us to be even more frugal than usual and to postpone expenditures that we can make later in the year while we keep successfully delivering our programs.
-Pier Oddone, Fermilab Director
