On February 14, President Obama released his administration’s budget request for the 2012 fiscal year, which includes a $66.8 billion request for federal science spending. Under this new budget, funds for the Department of Energy’s Office of Science would increase by $452 million, a 9% increase over current funding levels. But whether the 10 national laboratories supported by the Office of Science will ever see that money remains to be seen; Republicans in the House of Representatives are intent on making major cuts to nonmilitary federal spending, starting with the 2011 budget.
The House Budget Committee has proposed a $1.1 billion reduction in the $5.12 billion request for the Office of Science’s 2011 budget. These cuts would not only return the office’s funding to 2008 levels, but this 18% reduction would most likely have to be absorbed in the final months of the 2011 budget. This would be a huge break from the increases written into the America COMPETES act, which was recently reauthorized by President Obama.
“My guess is that the only way they could accommodate that kind of reduction and not break contracts is to close the facilities down for the balance of the year,” Michael Lubell, director of public affairs for the American Physical Society, told Nature. “The lab directors were already looking at how they would handle a 5% annual reduction, or maybe as much as 10%, but no one was contemplating a reduction of this size.”
Some are optimistic that the President’s latest budget proposal allows for generous increases to important projects like CEBAF and FRIB, but officials at the national labs are hesitant to celebrate just yet.
“The hard part is going to be figuring out what happens now,” said William Madia, vice president at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. “What actually happens in the House and Senate? From what I’ve heard, it’s not looking like it’s going to be pretty.
