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U.S. Government Research and Development Budget - Summary of past events

Aug 31, 2011

After long debates over the U.S. federal debt ceiling, a compromise has been passed late on July 31, allowing the U.S. President to increase the debt limit up to $2 trillion.  This increase will be immediately offset by 1.2 trillion in discretionary spending caps over the next 10 years and additional discretionary cuts up to $1.5 trillion will be determined by a commission by December of this year.  This will have an effect in the long term to the overall R&D investments of U.S. scientific agencies.


The House and the Senate still have to work on many appropriations bills that will affect scientific agencies, especially for those with applied research programs some of which have already seen proposed budget cuts of more than thirty percent.

The James Webb Space Telescope, a collaborative project with many EU members, is under scrutiny and may lose its funding if voted by the House and the Senate.  For Climate and Energy related programs, federal funding might also not be used to assist developing countries adapt to climate change or transition to sources of clean energy.  In addition, funding for the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and the World Bank's Strategic Climate Fund and Clean Technology Fund may be eliminated.


For more information also refer to the July 2011 BILAT USA - Link2US newsletter:
http://www.euussciencetechnology.eu/uploads/docs/E-Newsletter_July-2011.pdf


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BILAT-USA (Grant Agreement no: 244434) and Link2US (Grant Agreement no: 244371) Projects are co-funded by the European Union’s Capacities Programme on International Cooperation under the 7th Framework Programme for Research and Technological Cooperation.