We’ve seen the House version of the 2009 stimulus bill. Now we’ve gotten our first glimpse of the highlights (though no full text) for the Senate version. As expected, the numbers in the Senate version are not as generous as the House numbers. Here is the breakdown:
The Department of Energy: The Senate highlights show $40 billion “for development of clean, efficient, American energy” but no breakdown on how that will be spent or how much might go to basic research.
The National Science Foundation: $1.4 billion for grants and infrastructure at NSF which is less than the $3 billion in the House version.
Additionally, NASA and NIH each get $1.5 billion and $3.5 billion, respectively, but NIST would not receive any additional funds in the Senate bill. A handy comparison chart is available at Inside Higher Education. We will have more here as the full text of the Senate bill is released and we can do a more thorough breakdown and comparison.
Update: More detail about the final Senate bill