The Senate Appropriations Committee next week will apparently move their version of the VA-HUD-Independent Agencies appropriations bill that includes funding for the National Science Foundation and NASA. I’ve been told from a couple of different sources that NSF will fare better in the Senate bill than it did in the House version of the bill — which called for a cut of 2.0 percent to the agency’s budget in FY 2005 — but I don’t have any specific numbers.
CRA joined with a number of different scientific societies to urge the Senate to reject the funding levels contained in the House bill, so it’s good to see that some of that pressure might have paid off. But we’ll wait and see what the actual bill contains.
In the meantime, you’ve still got a chance to urge your Senators to reject the proposed cuts to NSF. CRA’s Computing Research Advocacy Network (CRAN) has been very active in this effort and has an informative page with background on the issue, contact information for your Senators and Representative, as well as a sample letter you can use to make the case for computing research. The response so far has been fantastic, but in this case, more is definitely better. So if you haven’t already, please take a look at the site. And consider joining CRAN!