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 agreed 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, netting 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, modeling, and education.

The omnibus appropriations bill that will spell out the 2010 budgets of these and other federal science bodies is likely to come to a vote in the House soon, but a Senate vote may be put on hold by the health care reform bill making the rounds now.


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