from Jonathan Nurse, Assistant Director, Office of Federal Relations, UW
America COMPETES Act Reauthorization
The recently signed American COMPETES Act reauthorization allows for increases to the budgets of the National Science Foundation, Department of Energy Office of Science, and National Institute of Standards and Technology. The original COMPETES Act was signed into law in 2007 and set the three aforementioned science agencies on course to double their budgets over a 10 year period (fiscal years 2008-2017). The Act must be reauthorized periodically (so far every 3 years), because Congress only approves a portion of the overall 10 year framework at a time. The COMPETES Act only authorizes increased spending, it is up to Congress to annually appropriate funding to keep pace with the authorization. Increases in support for the federal science agencies typically has a positive impact on the UW. This trend is clearly seen in the $300+ million that UW has been awarded from the $21 billion investment in research and development made in the Recovery Act of 2009.