Washington

The US Senate has restored cuts proposed by the House of Representatives to next year's budget for the space agency NASA and the National Science Foundation (NSF) (see Nature 401, 103; 1999).

Last week, the Senate appropriations committee passed an appropriations bill for Veterans Affairs, Housing, Urban Development (VA-HUD) and independent agencies that would fund both agencies at the levels proposed by President Bill Clinton in February. At these levels, the NSF's budget would increase by $250 million to $3.9 billion, and NASA's would be held at $13.6 billion.

The committee's action, which was expected to be endorsed by the full Senate this week, increases the probability that the two agencies will be funded at these levels. The Senate and House proposals will be reconciled later this month, before a joint VA-HUD bill is sent to Clinton for his signature. His advisers have said that he would veto the House's proposed $1 billion cut at NASA.

NSF director Rita Colwell, whose initiatives in biocomplexity and supercomputer research were threatened by the cuts, says: “We aren't at the finish line yet, but I am breathing more easily”.

The Senate obtained extra money for its VA-HUD bill by transferring several billion dollars from the bill for labour, health and education. Both houses of Congress have been tapping the labour bill's allocation all summer, so that it is some $20 billion short of the $90 billion its programmes are expected to cost.

According to government officials, Senate appropriators believed the labour bill's allocation was already so low that it had no chance of passing. “Taking another few billion dollars from it won't make any difference,” explains one official. The programmes in the labour bill, which include some for the National Institutes of Health, are almost certain to receive temporary funding.

There are various schemes afoot to rescue the labour bill. Most involve using money due to be spent after 1 October 2000, when the financial year ends, so that Congress can claim it did not break its spending cap.

Another option would be for either Congress or Clinton to admit that they cannot operate under the spending caps set by the Budget Balancing Act of 1997, which assumed cuts that Washington has been unable to implement.