A $1 billion boost for NIH announced in the 2011 budget this morning (Feb 1) has quelled fears that US President Barack Obama's proposed non-security discretionary spending freeze would decrease budgets at federal science agencies.

Image: Revisorweb via Wikimedia Commons

Numbers released from the White House's Office of Management and Budget (OMB) tell of slight increases in the budgets of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Department of Energy's (DOE) Office of Science, and the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Obama requested $32.1 billion for the NIH in 2011, calling for the agency to "Initiate 30 new drug trials in 2011, and double the number of novel compounds in Phase 1 - 3 clinical trials by 2016," according to information from OMB. The president requested --and got -- $30.8 billion for the NIH last year. Overall, Obama requested $81.3 billion for all of the Department of Health and Human Services in 2011, an increase of almost $2 billion over the $79.6 billion HHS got in last year's final budget.

The DOE's Office of Science stands to get $5.1 billion in the president's budget, $1.8 billion of which would go towards basic research into new ways to produce, store, and use energy.

The NSF would get $7.4 billion in 2011, a nearly 8% increase over its budget of just under $7 billion last year.

Though the president's budget drops the budget of the US Department of Agriculture by $1 billion, it requests $429 million for competitive research grants through the US Department of Agriculture's Agriculture and Food Research Initiative. If this figure survives Congress, it would be the highest funding level ever for the program.

Those of you in the mood for a little light reading might want to peruse President Obama's FY 2011 budget request in its entirety here.


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Will Obama's freeze chill science?
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[10th December 2009]