Science a Victim of Politics Again

The NSF has a new Theoretical Foundations solicitation. Due date is February 19. Theory of Computing has its own component within this cluster.

But not all NSF news is good. Remember how Bush announced an American Competitive Initiative in his State of the Union back in February. ACI promised to double the NSF budget over ten years and the president's proposed budget included an NSF increase of 7.8% for FY 2007 that started October 1. The ACI had good support among both political parties in congress. So what happened?

Congress couldn't pass most of the budget resolutions before the elections. Monday Congressional democrats announced they won't finish the spending bills left unfinished by the current congress leaving budgets at last year's level until the beginning of FY 2008 next October.

In a joint statement, the incoming Democratic chairmen of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees said the urgency of new business and the administration's next spending request for the war in Iraq gave them little choice but to abandon efforts to pass the overdue bills.

The increases for NSF and other scientific agencies weren't singled out but science was one of the few programs slated for a long-needed budget increase this year.

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