Computing Research Policy Blog

The Computing Research Association (or CRA) has been involved in shaping public policy of relevance to computing research for more than two decades. More recently the CRA Government Affairs program has enhanced its efforts to help the members of the computing research community contribute to the public debate knowledgeably and effectively.


Tag Archive: FY16 Budget


FY16 Budget Update: Still Waiting on Congress


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.

Senate Appropriations Subcommittee Approves NSF Funding; it’s definitely not great, but it could be worse


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 […]

House Appropriations Committee Passes CJS Funding; Mixed News for NSF


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.