Looming Federal Budget Battles

Abstract

With the start of the 2014 federal fiscal year just two weeks away, government funded researchers are bracing for yet another year of shifting budgets and financial uncertainties. In what has become standard practice over the past decades, Congress has run out of time to pass a complete budget through the normal process. Republicans in the House of Representatives have proposed a bill that would avoid a government shutdown on Oct. 1, when the fiscal year starts, and keep the doors open until Dec. 15. But provisions linking the bill to defunding of President Barack Obama’s health care law and its failure to remove across-the-board cuts brought on by budget sequestration make the House proposal unlikely to pass in the Senate. That means the uncertainty is likely to continue for weeks, months, or even longer. Jumping from budget crisis to budget crisis is bad for science, University of California Senior ...