Perhaps the bottom line, then, is that while the Obama Administration did what it could — at times generously so — on
science and innovation funding, such investments and others in the discretionary budget have been secondary to the bigger fights that truly define our fiscal politics,
over healthcare, retirement, deficits and debt, levels of taxation, and so on (and it can't be underestimated how truly intractable these challenges really are, as indicated by the labyrinthine
wrangling and ultimate failure of the President's Bowles - Simpson deficit commission).
That accord should preserve the site while the two agencies
wrangle over how to transfer primary responsibility for the Deep Underground
Science and Engineering Laboratory (DUSEL) from NSF to DOE.