The US Senate is today expected to pass an amended version of the stimulus package (pdf format), which is estimated to cost $838 billion (pdf).
Overall, science fared well in the Senate. According to an analysis by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (pdf format), the Senate bill includes $17.8 billion for research and development, including $2 billion for new facilities and equipment - compared to $13.2 billion in the version previously passed by the House of Representatives.
This boost is mostly due to an extra $6.5 billion provided by the Senate for biomedical research at the National Institutes of Health. But the two main agencies that support the physical sciences - National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy's Office of Science - were not so favoured. In the Senate bill, they get only $1.2 billion and $330 million respectively, compared to $3 billion and $2 billion in the House version.
A committee of members from the House and the Senate will now have to thrash out the differences between the two bills, so that a unified version can be put on President Obama's desk. He wants to sign the bill into law by Presidents' Day, 16 February. "They're not going to sleep if they want to stick to this deadline," says AAAS budget analyst Kei Koizumi.
For those who want to examine the figures more closely, the lobby group Scientists and Engineers for America has provided a spreadsheet comparing the Senate and House bills (.xls format).
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