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Budget limbo continues for US science

The US budget limbo continues, as US President Barack Obama this morning signed a short-term continuing resolution (CR) that funds the government until April 8. It buys legislators three more weeks to thrash out the differences between the Republican-majority House of Representatives and the Democrat-majority Senate over the fiscal year 2011 budget. The most recent resolution is the sixth since the fiscal year began on October 1. It cuts $6 billion from current funding, $2 billion more than the previous CR, but far below the $61 billion in cuts passed by the House of Representatives on Feb 19. That bill has not passed the Senate and legislators there have proposed a compromise that would cut about half as much.

The House cuts would translate into dramatic reductions in the budgets of the Department of Energy’s Office of Science, which directly supports ten national laboratories, and the Environmental Protection Agency. The Senate compromise, a kind of best-case scenario for science, would keep those cuts below 5%.

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