The National Insitutes of Health, National Science Foundation and NASA have not yet received funding after Congress passed a $50 billion foreign affairs spending bill over a month ago.
The president of the United States signed the bill into law on Feb. 3, with appropriations covering programs like global health initiatives, humanitarian aid and support for allies.
In terms of the science, the slowdown mainly affects grant-funded research, including biomedical research at universities (NIH), science and engineering grants (NSF) and space science missions (NASA). Universities and labs also rely on new grant awards for hiring researchers, lab budgets and new initiatives in the continuum of research.
Under longstanding federal budget practice described in OMB Circular A-11, agencies automatically receive an initial apportionment of roughly 30 days of funding after a full-year appropriations bill is enacted. This automatic apportionment allows agencies to continue operations while OMB reviews and approves detailed apportionment requests and spending plans. If the full apportionment has not yet been approved, additional pro-rata funding may continue temporarily.
As noted by Nature, the OMB revised the Circular A-11, also known as the Budget Bible last August. This revision limits the automatic 30-day apportionment to roughly 8.22% of annual funding to cover only essential expenses like employee salaries, legally required payments and emergency activities. What’s more, it removed the automatic repeating 30-day apportionments, meaning agencies must wait for OMB approval to access the rest of their funds.
The grant money currently being dispersed are leftover from a stopgap funding measure introduced in November. The current fiscal year ends on Sept. 30.