Andrew Lawler, Eliot Marshall
The same day--12 September--that fusion research took a 5% cut, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) budget got a 4.1% boost. Neither community reacted too loudly to the news, however. "We are grateful--it could have been much worse," says Anne Davies, who heads the Department of Energy effort, about the vote in the House on what is expected to be DOE's 1997 budget. As for NIH, the increase by a Senate panel falls between the Administration's request and an earlier House vote. But prospects for a final spending bill are clouded by a $6 billion gap between what the president wants to spend on education and health and what Congress has supported.