Two weeks ago Rep. Darin LaHood, (R-Illinois), sponsor of the 2017 NITRD funding bill – The Networking and Information Technology Research and Development Program – issued a formal statement championing the proposed budget. NITRD, of course, is the nation’s primary source of federally funded work on advanced information technologies (IT) in computing, networking, and software; it is a huge basket of programs, and this year includes the National Strategic Computing Initiative. The FY2016 NITRD budget is estimated at $4.49 billion and the President Obama’s FY2017 request is basically flat at $4.54 billion. LaHood’s statement of support isn’t surprising given that the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) and its Blue Waters resource are in his home state and receive on the order $400 million in funding via NITRD. To read more, please visit http://www.hpcwire.com/2016/06/07/nitrds-proposed-4-5b-budget-gains-support/