Last week's passage of the American Taxpayers Relief Act may have settled the fight between Democrats and Republicans over changes in the country's tax code. But it simply provides a 2-month reprieve for resolving the spending side of the crisis, a hiatus that leaves the status of thousands of federal programs up in the air. In the next few months, Congress and the Obama administration must decide whether to prevent a blunt ax known as sequestration from lopping tens of billions of dollars from all discretionary government spending in the current fiscal year, including research.