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August 27, 2009

Office of Management and Budget planning FY 2011 research spending

                                                                                 

While Congress and the American public are focused on the health care debate, other parts of Washington, DC, continue to follow their annual agency planning process. Whether it’s a local city budget or the NIH budget, there is great time and effort spent winnowing out what is needed for continuing purposes as well as starting new programs.

Several weeks ago, the Office of Management and Budget and the Office of Science and Technology Policy released a joint memo to all federal research agencies. The two offices directed agencies like NSF, NIH, NASA, as well as smaller research agencies, to start preparing their Fiscal Year 2011 budgets. The memo dictates what President Obama seeks from the agencies in their budget submissions. Those agencies which meet the memo's principles may have an increase or smaller cut in their budget.

These directives are where the plans and future funding levels for new or continuing programs come from. And while Congress is still working on its FY2010 budget bills, work has started on next year's budget. KU supports increasing federal research budgets and will continue to be a vigorous advocate on Capitol Hill to achieve this goal.