Averted, For Now

While the US government has averted a shutdown by passing a new continuing resolution to fund government agencies for another two weeks without affecting science agencies' budgets, Nature's Great Beyond Blog points out that science budgets may still be trimmed down. In mid-February, the House of Representatives passed a budget bill for fiscal year 2011 with "deep cuts for science agencies," Nature says. Those cuts include a 5 percent, or $1.63 billion, cut to the National Institutes of Health's budget and the same percentage cut, or $359.5 million, for the National Science Foundation's budget. The Senate has not passed this bill, and is working on its own. "If we don't invest in research and innovation," said Senator Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) at Argonne National Laboratories, according to the Chicago Tribune, "we are not going to have the new businesses, the new opportunities, the new manufacturing that America needs."