Congress appears poised to send its first set of fiscal year 2012 (FY12) appropriations bills to the President for his signature this weekend. Combining the appropriations bills for Agriculture/FDA,
Commerce/Justice/Science (CJS) and Transportation/ Housing and Urban
Development, the so-called minibus contains the final levels for NSF, Census, BEA, BJS, BTS, ERS and NASS.
The minibus provides relatively good news for NSF and NASS, funding both agencies above their FY11 levels and above both the House and Senate levels. ($7.033 billion for NSF and
$158.6 million for NASS. See links below for more details.)
Unfortunately, the bill funds the U.S. Census Bureau at only $888 million, $137 million below the FY12 request. The impacts of this deep cut are yet to be fully determined but likely impacts are a scaled-back Economic Census (e.g., no Survey of Business Owners), scaled-back 2020 decennial census research and planning, and few 2010 decennial census products.
The minibus conference report transfers $55 million to the Periodic Censuses and Programs from the Census Working Capital fund, seemingly to make up for the shortfall from the Senate mark. Such a transfer however will not alleviate program cuts since the Working Capital fund pays for such essentials as salaries, IT, HR, and security.
The minibus also contains large cuts for the Economic Research Service (down 5% from FY11) and the Bureau of Justice Statistics (down 25% from FY11). BTS is largely flatfunded while BEA's budget is cut by about 1% to $92.2 million.
The other parts of the federal government will continue to operate on another Continuing Resolution into December.
See also