Sir

Your News story “Power shift stymies US science budget” (Nature 445, 130–131; 2007) states that staff at the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) are “apparently not too disappointed” by the prospect of Congress passing a continuing resolution that would limit funding to fiscal year (FY) 2006 levels rather than providing the increase of more than 24% in the agency's laboratory and facilities funding proposed by President Bush's FY 2007 budget. You quote a NIST spokesman as saying: “Proposed budgets rarely come through as proposed, so there were no emotions here.”

This is not correct. NIST employees care deeply about their budget and these statements misrepresent the agency.

The initiatives proposed in the FY 2007 budget are essential to NIST's ability to fulfil its mission and are critical to the overall success of the president's American Competitiveness Initiative. A freeze in funding of NIST's core programme at 2006 levels would slow progress in a wide range of important areas, including safely exploiting nanotechnologies in a vast range of applications from paints to medicines to electronics; developing the measurement infrastructure required to support hydrogen fuels; and advancing basic physics to realize quantum computing.

There are a number of different ways in which Congress can implement a continuing resolution. Our hope would be that NIST will be allowed to move forward on as many of these critical priorities as possible.