Saturday, February 14, 2009

The Stimulus Bill Approved

The stimulus bill was approved by both the US House of Representatives and the Senate yesterday. It will now be on President Obama's desk to be signed, which he planned to do.

While the bill was as generous with physical science funding as in the original congressional bill, both the DOE and NSF came out of it with substantial money to spend, many on shovel-ready and approved projects just waiting for the money to arrive. This is the most favorable outcome of a budget/funding bill for the physical sciences that we have seen in quite a while. So I'm pleasantly shocked.

The interesting thing left to see is how the money is going to be allocated. While details are still sketchy, it appears that specific provisions have been made for different areas of physics. I wonder if High Energy Physics, for example, will get to restart the ILC effort, and if ITER funding gets a boost.

Zz.

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