The President's Budget and Me

The President released his budget proposal for Fiscal Year 2012 this morning.  It may not mean much since we don't yet have a budget for this year.  However, the New York Times has a nice chart showing how the administration is proposing to spend our tax money.

The part of the budget that affects me most directly is the Department of Energy because a grant from that Dept. pays my celery salary, and it provides most of the funding for the experiments on which I work.  It is marked "ENERGY" in the lower right hand portion of the Times chart.  More specifically the budge of High Energy Physics, the subfield in which I work, receives a small increase, as you can see in Slide 24 of Secretary of Energy Steven Chu's presentation of the proposal.

Secretary Chu's FY 2012 Budget Briefing

On Slide 6, you can see that the Tevatron run will not be extended.  This was officially conveyed in a Dept. of Energy memo and has gotten coverage in Fermilab Today, the Beacon News, Science News, and The New York Times.