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Agreement on Budget

Lawmakers in the US have come to a $1.4 trillion budget agreement, according to the Wall Street Journal. It adds that the announcement comes as the current spending bill is to expire on Friday.

As the Journal reports, the bill, if passed and signed into law, will increase federal discretionary spending for the fiscal year by about $50 billion. This, GenomeWeb adds, includes budget increases for the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Food and Drug Administration.

Under the terms of the agreement, NIH will receive a nearly 7 percent, or $2.6 billion, boost to bring its budget to $41.7 billion. In particular, the All of Us program will receive $500 million as will the BRAIN initiative, while the Cancer Moonshot research program and the Childhood Cancer Data Initiative will receive $195 million and $50 million, respectively. At the same time, CDC will receive an additional $636 million and the FDA an extra $91 million.

ScienceInsider adds that other science agencies such as the National Science Foundation, Department of Energy's Office of Science, and NASA's space science program also are to receive budget boosts. It further notes that the Trump Administration initially sought budget cuts for many of the science agencies that now stand to receive increased funding.

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