Washington

The US National Science Foundation (NSF) got some good news last week, when a House committee proposed a 13% increase in its funding for the 2003 fiscal year, which began on 1 October. But, for the NSF, and every other agency of the federal government, the big question is when a gridlocked Congress will get around to passing any budget at all.

As lawmakers return to their home states for this November's elections, the federal government faces its biggest budget log-jam in years. None of the 13 appropriations bills that fund the government has been agreed by Congress and signed by the president. All agencies are instead getting money at 2002 levels under a 'continuing resolution'. So, for agencies such as the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which had been anticipating a huge $3.7-billion funding increase, plans for spending the extra money are on hold.

The budget is stalled because neither the Democrat-controlled Senate nor the Republican-led House can agree spending levels that fall within the overall budget proposed by President Bush back in February.

At the head of the snarl-up in the House is the labour, health and education bill, which funds the NIH: the House leadership wants it to pass at the level suggested by President Bush, but Democrats and some moderate Republicans say it doesn't contain enough money to meet their various spending priorities.

Elias Zerhouni, director of the NIH, told Congress last week that a long-term continuing resolution will delay construction of a new clinical centre on the NIH campus and stall its $1.5-billion plan for bioterrorism research. Also, says Pat White of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, it could cut by a third the number of new grants that the NIH can make in the coming year's first round of awards, due in December.

Continuing resolutions will nonetheless probably extend at least until after the elections. The old Congress may then seek to resolve the budget in a 'lame duck' session before the new Congress arrives in January — but the progress of such a session will hinge on the election outcome, and it is quite possible that the flat funding could continue into January or beyond. “The wheels have come off the budget process,” White says.

So the proposed NSF increase — a large advance on the 5% hike proposed by President George Bush in February (see Nature 415, 564; 2002) — leaves science lobbyists only moderately thrilled. “All of us are pleased with the House's recommendation,” says Samuel Rankin, chair of the Coalition for National Science Funding, which advocates doubling NSF funding over five years. “But it won't mean anything if there isn't a budget.”