First, the good news: the government won’t have to shut down on Saturday, as Congressional leaders have agreed to a continuing resolution (CR) through December 9. Bad news: we have no idea with a final Fiscal year 2017 will look like or when it will be settled.
With the introduction of the Fiscal Year 2016 Omnibus this week, Congress is poised to put the budget to rest for the year. Here are the details of importance to the computing research community.
When we last talked about the FY16 budget, it was early October and it was looking like the next Speaker of the House would be Kevin McCarthy (R-CA). As we now know, in early December, the Speakership is very different but we still don’t have a passed-into-law budget. Congress has until this Friday, December 11th, to either pass a budget into law or to pass a stopgap continuing resolution (CR). Or let the government shutdown.
[Update (10/8/15: 12:40 pm): Well, that was quick. McCarthy has apparently withdrawn from the Speaker race and the leadership election has been postponed… ] [From this month’s Computing Research News] A last-minute agreement hammered out September 30th between the House and Senate, just hours before the start of the new Federal fiscal year, averted a government […]
CRA today filed comments with Senators Cory Gardner (R-CO) and Gary Peters (D-MI) urging the senators to put a priority on ensuring that fundamental research in the physical sciences, including computing, sees strong and sustainable growth as the senators work to build bipartisan consensus around a reauthorization of a key science policy bill. The senators […]
When the Republicans took full control of Congress in January, they vowed to return the body to “regular order;” meaning passing the 12 appropriations bills before the end of fiscal year (October 1st). So how have they done?
The Coalition for National Security Research (CNSR), a broad-based coalition of 74 members (of which CRA is a member) including industry, research universities and institutes, and scientific and professional associations committed to a strong Defense Science and Technology (S&T) Program, released a statement commending the Senate Appropriations Committee for their work on S. 1558, the […]
On June 10th, the Senate Commerce, Justice, and Science Appropriations Subcommittee approved their Fiscal Year 2016 funding bill, which funds, among other things, the budget for the National Science Foundation. The bill was passed on a bipartisan basis in the subcommittee, with only three votes (out of 30 total) against it. Unlike the House CJS […]
On May 20th the full House Appropriations Committee passed the Commerce, Justice, Science funding bill; this is important to our community because it is the bill that contains the funding for the National Science Foundation, which funds 89 percent of all university-led fundamental computer science research in the U.S. First, the not-so-bad news: NSF doesn’t exactly get a budget cut in actual dollars; it in fact gets a small bump (though when inflation is considered, that bump may go away completely). The worse news: NSF gets some onerous language on how to spend the tax-dollars it’s allocated. Let’s get into the details.
The House of Representatives today will consider the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2015 (H.R. 1806), a bill designed to set policy at three key science agencies and authorize funding for the next two fiscal years. The bill is being brought to the floor by House Science, Space and Technology Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-TX), who secured […]
