2010 NIH budget bump

Congress has inched closer to finalizing the budgets for key federal science agencies in the 2010 fiscal year, with a small boost for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and a larger increase for the National Science Foundation (NSF) in the works.

Image: US Dept. of the Treasury

A combined House and Senate appropriations committee linkurl:agreed;http://www.appropriations.senate.gov/news.cfm?method=news.view&id=882f239d-0df8-4adf-b707-0f407783eddd on a 2.3% bump for the NIH, which will have a $31 billion budget next year. This represents an increase of about $692 million over the agency's 2009 budget (not counting the billions it raked in from recovery funding) and is about $250 million more than President Barack Obama's budget request for the NIH. The NSF fared a little better, linkurl:netting;http://www.appropriations.senate.gov/news.cfm?method=news.view&id=882f239d-0df8-4adf-b707-0f407783eddd a $436 million budget bump to bring its 2010 budget to a cool $6.9 billion. This is a 6.7% increase over NSF's 2009 base budget and includes $310 million for climate change research,...