Faculty and Staff

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Federal Issues - Archived Appropriation Bills

President signs FY09 Omnibus

The package provides full-year funding for programs in the nine FY09 appropriations that were not finished last year. Agencies supported through those bills were funded by the CR largely at their FY08 levels. The $410-billion measure provides $30 billion, or eight percent, more for the programs in the nine bills than they received in FY08.

The bill provides significant funding increases for research and higher education programs. General summaries of the legislation, along with the bill language and reports, are available here. AAU’s chart showing funding for AAU priority agencies can be found here.

American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan of 2009

President Obama has signed into law the historic American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan of 2009. This combination of tax cuts and spending treats student aid and university research well. The bill provides a $500 increase in the Pell Grant maximum award for FY09 and FY10 and about $15 billion for five federal research agencies. Below are details of the bill.

--Student Aid

Pell Grants: The final agreement provides $15.6 billion over FY09 and FY10 for the Pell Grant program. This funding would raise the Pell grant maximum award by $500 and eliminate the current discretionary and mandatory spending shortfalls in the program.

Federal Work Study: The bill also provides an added $200 million for Federal Work Study.

--Taxes: (See AAU side-by-side for additional details.)

Education Tax Credit: The bill expands eligibility for the Hope tax credit from two to four years for 2009 and 2010 and increases the credit from $1,800 to $2,400. The credit is 40 percent refundable.

--Research: (See AAU side-by-side for additional details.)

National Institutes of Health: The measure provides $10.4 billion for NIH.

National Science Founcation: The bill provides $3 billion for NSF.

NASA: The measure increases funding for NASA by $1 billion.

Department of Energy Office of Science: The final bill includes $1.6 billion for energy research and $400 million for the new DOE Advanced Research Projects Agency.

National Institute of Standards and Technology: Among other provisions, the final bill provides $360 million for construction of research buildings, with $180 million of that total allocated to a “competitive construction grant program for research science buildings.” A press release from Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ) indicates this latter funding is for colleges, universities, and other research organizations.

National Endowment for the Humanities: The Administration proposes a budget for the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) in FY10 of $171.3 million, an increase of $16.3 million, or more than 10 percent.