The Battle Over the 2011 Budget:What's at Stake for Research

摘要

The 112th Congress convened this week amid cries from fiscal conservatives to shrink the federal budget and reduce the deficit. With revenues unlikely to grow much now that the outgoing Congress has extended Bush-era income tax cuts for the next 2 years, the immediate task of deficit hawks will be to convince their colleagues that individual agencies should receive less in 2011. But that begs an important question: Less than what? As federal officials ring in the new year, they are essentially marking time, fiscally speaking.