Curiouser and curioser

In this morning's New Mexican there is an article stating that no further job cuts will be needed at LANL and Sandia in the immediate future. Senator Domenici stated that most of the cuts asked for by the House of Representatives have been restored by means of a little horse trading, no RRW and lots of plutonium pits made. In the Christian Science Monitor, there is an article suggesting that this budget compromise is mostly smoke and mirrors since there is not the money to pay for it.

If you try to track down the details of the compromise and what the compromise might mean for the future of Los Alamos, you find a nice article on Fox News , which leads to the actual 1,400 plus page compromise bill that was passed early this morning (House Rules Committee ). You also find that Republicans claim that they have not seen the bill before and have only 24 hours to digest and comment on the 1,400 pages.

I found no mention of this bill in the Washington Times, the Washington Post, the New York Times, or the LA Times.

You also find that a current member of the House Appropriations Committee (a difficult committee assignment to get) is Tom Udall. This is the committee that writes the checks to pay for things. Next year because he is leaving the House and running for the Senate, he will not be on this committee, and thus have no say in its spending. The loss of Udall's voice on Appropriations is unlikely to be good for New Mexico.

Can anyone make sense of all this complexity for me so that I can make a prediction for myself about what might happen to budgeting at LANL in the next few years? There are so many forces in budget bills that are beyond parochial New Mexican interests and so many deals that do not end up in newspaper articles that is difficult to predict what might happen next. Also, everything appears to happen at the last minute (60% of the House Rules committee meetings are marked Emergency). Does it really happen at the last minute in a state of panic?

Thanks in advance for any insights that someone can provide.

There are now versions of this story at CNN , NPR and the Washington Post. There is also an another article in the New Mexican suggesting that the Lab (probably both Livermore and Los Alamos) need to broaden their missions.

Here are some links to a breaking story from John Fleck about downsizing and redoing the labs, NNSA's complex transformation (you remember, the thing that they are not really doing now and are taking public input on), suggestions for changing LLNL, and suggestions for changing LANL.