President Obama Signs Spending Bill, Keeping S&T Funding Stable

This week, President Obama signed off on the continuing resolution omnibus spending package that will keep the federal government open for another nine months (see last week’s analysis).The spending bill provides stable funding for R&D and most research agencies, according to analysis by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). About $137.6 billion is appropriated for federal R&D, a modest 1.7 percent increase over FY14. Most science and technology agencies would receive small increases, with a few exceptions. Department of Defense applied research funding would decline, funding for most institutes of the National Institutes of Health would not keep pace with inflation and the Department of Energy’s Office of Science and ARPA-E would receive flat funding. Read the AAAS science and technology summary…