Tonight the House narrowly passed an omnibus FY15 appropriations measure that would fund 11 of 12 annual appropriations bills and provide stop-gap funding for the 12th (the Homeland Security bill), a move that would provide increases for the National Science Foundation and for key computing programs at the Department of Energy’s Office of Science.

The Senate must still approve the bill. The Federal government continues to operate under a “continuing resolution” that expires at midnight tonight (Thursday, Dec. 11th). Because it’s likely the Senate won’t complete their work by then, the House is prepared to pass a two-day extension of the CR to give the Senate additional time.

The $1.1 trillion spending bill faced opposition from Democrats and conservative Republicans (for different reasons) and almost failed to pass a procedural vote in the House earlier in the afternoon after a group of conservative Republicans voted against the rule that would allow the bill to be considered on the House floor. The group was concerned that spending cuts in the bill didn’t go far enough and did nothing to block the President’s recent actions on immigration. Some arm-twisting of Democrats by President Obama secured enough votes for the measure to pass it 219-206.

Here are a few items of interest to the computing research community in the 1600 page bill:

• The National Science Foundation would receive an increase of $172 million, or about 2.4 percent over its FY14 budget. The House had approved a slightly larger increase (3.3 percent) in its version of the Commerce Justice, Science Appropriations Act passed earlier this year and the Senate appropriations committee had approved a slightly lower increase (1.2 percent) in its version. The final bill doesn’t quite split the difference. The bill would bring the agency’s total budget to $7.3 billion, $89 million more than the President requested for FY15. From the additional funding the committee wants more work targeted at “advanced manufacturing, and for research in cybersecurity and cyber-infrastructure” and $21 million in new funding for the NSF’s activities in the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) initiative, including work in computational models, visualization techniques, innovative technologies and “the underlying data and data infrastructure needed to transform our understanding of these areas.”

  While not as big as win as outgoing House CJS Chair Frank Wolf had hoped for the agency, the $172 million increase still represents a win given the flat or declining funding many other important programs received in the bill.

• The bill holds Dept. of Energy’s Office of Science flat — it would receive the same funding as in FY14. Despite the flat funding for the office, the Advanced Scientific Computing Research program would receive a $62 million increase, matching the agency request for FY15. In fact, ASCR joins the Fusion Research program as the only two Office of Science programs called out for increases in the bill. Included in the ASCR funding is $91 million for the Department’s Exascale computing efforts; $104 million for Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility; $80 million for Argonne LCF; $75 million for NERSC; and $3 million for the Computational Sciences Graduate Fellowship program, a program CRA joined with the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) in both 2013 and 2014 to urge Congress to continue. (And they have.)

• ARPA-E would remain flat-funded.

• NIST would receive a slight bump. NIST’s Science and Technical Research and Services (STRS) account would increase to $675.5 million in FY15. Included in that is $15 million for the National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence, up to $60.7 million for cybersecurity R&D; $4 million for cybersecurity education; and $16.5 million for the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace.

• Defense Department Basic Research (6.1) would increase $112 million over FY14 to $2.28 billion; Applied Research (6.2) would dip $38 million below FY14 to $4.61 billion; and Advanced Technology Development (6.3) would increase $155 million to $5.53 billion. DARPA would increase $136 million to $2.91 billion in FY15.

For those interested in perusing what is being called the “Cromnibus” (continuing resolution (CR) + omnibus…sigh) here’s a link to the legislative language and all the agreed upon explanatory statements. With the House passage, it’s likely the Senate will follow suit — if not by the midnight Thursday deadline, then by midnight Saturday under an extended CR. If Senate passage isn’t possible, it’s thought the GOP leadership might opt for a 3 month CR extension. But I think the expectation at this point is for passage in the Senate and a quick signature from the President.

Whatever happens, we’ll bring you the details!

Photo by BrownGuacamole