TMS Public and Governmental Affairs Resource Center

With the Congressional schedule growing tighter and tighter heading into the summer—including a week-long Memorial Day recess and after that, just under two months remaining until the Democratic and Republican party conventions—Congressional leaders are now talking openly about giving up on the appropriations process for fiscal year (FY) 2009, looking to pass a continuing resolution to keep the government operating past October 1 but leaving it up to the new administration and new Congress to hash out details starting in February. This is very dire news for R&D funding, as it would mean essentially another year of flat funding for the “America COMPETES” agencies (the National Science Foundation, the research office of the Department of Energy, and the core laboratory programs of the National Institute of Standards and Technology). The National Institutes of Health and the R&D programs of the Department of Defense also would take a major hit. As for the supplemental appropriations bill for FY 2008—which the science and technology community has been working very diligently to carry restorative funding for the COMPETES agencies—it appears now that it will include only war funding and perhaps a few domestic programs such as unemployment benefit extensions, a boost in the GI bill education programs, and money for the Women, Infants and Children nutrition program.

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