(The complete series of AAAS R&D Funding Updates,
including continually updated analyses of R&D by agency in FY 2000
appropriations, is available on the AAAS R&D Web Site (http://www.aaas.org/spp/R&D)
in the "FY 2000 R&D" or the "What's
New" sections.)
(revisions in [ ] )
[On October 20, President Clinton signed into law an
FY 2000 VA-HUD appropriations bill (HR 2684) that gives increases to
R&D programs in the National Science Foundation (NSF).] The final bill
closely follows the Administration request and the Senate version of
the bill, and rejects the cuts to NSF's budget proposed in the House
version. The bill boosts NSF's budget by $202 million or 5.4 percent
to near the Administration's requested level of $3.9 billion. NSF's
directorates receive increases of at least 3 percent in the final bill,
and total NSF R&D climbs 5.5 percent to $2.9 billion (see
Table). Included in the bill is a 31 percent
increase for information technology research in the Directorate for
Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) for research
in areas similar to the Administration's proposed Information Technology
for the Twenty-First Century (IT2) initiative.
Although FY 2000 started on October 1, Congress is
still struggling to draft the 13 appropriations bills within discretionary
spending caps that are forcing sharp cuts to domestic discretionary
programs. The discretionary spending caps, enacted in 1997, require
FY 2000 discretionary spending to be nearly $20 billion below FY 1999
funding levels. Thanks to several accounting maneuvers, including billions
of dollars in rescissions of unspent housing funds, designations of
emergency spending for disaster relief, and advance appropriations of
FY 2001 funds, the final VA-HUD bill manages to stay within tight budget
totals while still providing increases for priority programs.
Within the $70 billion discretionary total for the
final VA-HUD bill, Congress provided NSF with just $9 million less than
its request, for a total NSF budget of $3.9 billion, an increase of
$202 million or 5.4 percent over FY 1999. NSF's R&D funding,
which excludes NSF's education and training activities and overhead
costs, totals $2.9 billion in FY 2000, an increase of $150 million or
5.5 percent (see Table).
The Research and Related Activities (R&RA)
account, which funds most of NSF's R&D, receives $3.0 billion, 5.6
percent or $157 million above the FY 1999 funding level but $38 million
below the request. Each directorate receives an increase of at least
3 percent.
The final VA-HUD bill dramatically increases NSF's
investments in information technology (IT) research. The Clinton Administration,
in its budget request, had proposed a multi-agency Information Technology
for the 21st Century (IT2) initiative in fundamental
computing and IT research with a $366 million budget for FY 2000, of
which $146 million would have come from NSF. Of that amount, NSF requested
$110 million for IT2 research in the Computer and Information
Science and Engineering (CISE) Directorate, funded within R&RA.
While the final bill does not mention IT2 by name, it does
provide an additional $90 million in new money for CISE, designated
"specifically for research in IT areas recommended in the PITAC report
and HR 2086."
The President's Information Technology Advisory Committee
(PITAC), which issued its final report in February 1999, recommended
that the federal investment in information technologies R&D be increased
by $1.37 billion over the next five years and that a strategic initiative
be created to support fundamental computing research that will lead
to breakthroughs and new capabilities to serve the growing demands on
information technologies. In response, the Administration created the
IT2 initiative, while in Congress the House Science Committee
introduced a bill (HR 2086) to authorize a multi-year IT research initiative
following the PITAC recommendations. The additional CISE funds will
go for fundamental research on software, scalable information infrastructure,
and high-end computing, all areas that IT2 proposes to address.
The CISE budget of $392 million represents a 31 percent increase over
FY 1999.
The remaining $36 million of NSF's proposed contribution
to IT2 comes from the Major Research Equipment account to
fund Terascale Computing Systems, a facilities project to build a five-teraflop
(trillions of computing operations a second) computing site. Congress
granted this request. The Major Research Equipment account receives
$95 million, up $10 million from the request and $5 million from FY
1999. The additional $10 million above the request will go to begin
production of a new high-altitude research aircraft.
The Biological Sciences (BIO) Directorate within R&RA
receives $416 million, $26 million or 6.5 percent more than FY 1999.
The bill boosts funding for the third year of the Plant Genome Research
Program from a requested $55 million to $60 million. NSF's new Integrative
Activities account, which supports emerging cross-disciplinary research
and major research instrumentation, receives $130 million, far less
than the request and FY 1999 level of $161 million. Although the final
bill provides the requested $50 million for the new Biocomplexity
initiative and $50 million (the same as FY 1999 and the FY 2000 request)
for Major Research Instrumentation, the bill does not provide any funding
for the Opportunity Fund, a fund designed to support innovative, cross-disciplinary
research taking advantage of emerging scientific opportunities. In FY
1999, the Fund received $24 million.
Education and Human Resources receives $697
million, $35 million more than FY 1999, including $55 million for the
Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR;
up from $48 million), a program to improve the research competitiveness
of 18 states (and Puerto Rico) traditionally underrepresented as recipients
of federal research funding. The final VA-HUD bill transfers the EPSCoR
program and its funds to a new Office of Innovation Partnerships, and
charges the new office with administering EPSCoR and also assisting
non-EPSCoR institutions that receive relatively little federal research
funding expand their research capacity and competitiveness. The new
office receives $10 million in addition to the $55 million in EPSCoR
funds.
NSF is the only federal agency with responsibility
for research in all major science and engineering fields. As shown in
Figure1, NSF has a balanced research portfolio covering the breadth
of science and engineering. In most fields, NSF is the largest or second-largest
source of federal funding.
Although growth in the NSF budget stagnated somewhat
in the mid-1990s, in the last few years NSF has received significant
funding increases, and most disciplines have shared in this growth.
Figure 2 shows recent trends in NSF support for selected disciplines.
