Economic stimulus and recoveryStimulus package offers billions for scientific research

How will the proposed economic stimulus package, now heading toward a reconciliation conference between the Senate and House, affect scientific research in the United States? The answer In several ways. Biomedical research is among the big winners, while physics appears to be among the losers.

The U.S. Senate will likely pass today an amended version of the stimulus package, which is expected to cost an estimated $838 billion. Peter Aldhous writes that, overall, science fared well in the Senate. According to an analysis by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the Senate bill includes $17.8 billion for research and development, including $2 billion for new facilities and equipment — compared to $13.2 billion in the version previously passed by the House of Representatives.

This boost is mostly due to an extra $6.5 billion provided by the Senate for biomedical research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The two main agencies that support the physical sciences — National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Department of Energy’s (DoE) Office of Science — received less. In the Senate bill, these agencies get only $1.2 billion and $330 million respectively, compared to $3 billion and $2 billion in the House version.

A reconciliation conference will now convene, and members from the House and the Senate will work on reconciling the differences between the two bills, so that a unified version can be put on President Obama’s desk. He wants to sign the bill into law by Presidents’ Day, 16 February. “They’re not going to sleep if they want to stick to this deadline,” says AAAS budget analyst Kei Koizumi.

Interested in studying the numbers more closely? The lobby group Scientists and Engineers for America has provided a spreadsheet comparing the Senate and House bills.