Highlights
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A large increase for the National Science Foundation (NSF) as part of the Administration’s
American Competitiveness Initiative (ACI) made it through the President’s request,
a House appropriation, a Senate appropriation, and an authorization bill but faltered
in the late scramble to write the 2008 omnibus appropriations bill. The final
NSF budget of $6.0 billion for fiscal year (FY) 2008 would be a 2.0 percent increase
over 2007, well short of the 8 to 10 percent increases in earlier bills and
the request (see Table).
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NSF’s research directorates receive increases well short of expected inflation,
and some could see outright cuts.
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NSF R&D investments (excluding education, training, and overhead costs) would
total $4.5 billion in 2008, up just 1.1 percent (see Table)
to fall short of inflation. NSF R&D
funding would be well below 2004 and 2007 levels in real terms.
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NSF’s Education and Human Resources (E.H.R.) budget, after years of steep budget
cuts, would increase 3.3 percent in 2008 to $722 million, less than requested.
NSF R&D in FY 2008 Final Appropriations
On December 26, President
Bush signed into law the FY 2008 omnibus appropriations bill (HR 2764) that had
cleared Congress a week earlier, bringing the 2008 appropriations process to a
close. The omnibus bill included a final version of the FY 2008 Commerce-Justice-Science
appropriations bill that was billions of dollars less than earlier House or Senate
versions of the bill providing funding for the National Science Foundation (NSF),
the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and the Department of
Commerce. The final 2008 appropriation for NSF is $6.0
billion after adjusting for across-the-board reductions and rescissions in the
omnibus bill, well short of earlier House, Senate, and requested appropriations
for a 2.0 percent or $116 million increase over 2007 (see Table).
Nearly two years ago,
President Bush announced in his FY 2007 budget a proposal to substantially increase
funding for key physical sciences research agencies over ten years as part of
an “American Competitiveness Initiative” (ACI), designed in part to address a
growing wave of concern about the state of U.S.
innovation. The National Science Foundation (NSF) was one of three ACI agencies
(the others are the DOE Office of Science, and the National Institute of Standards
and Technology laboratories) selected for a ten-year doubling trajectory in the
Administration plan. The FY 2008 NSF budget, released in February, built on congressional
approval of most of NSF’s 2007 increase with a second year of increases. The House
and Senate went along with these proposals and even added to them in their respective
appropriations bills, but faced presidential veto threats for exceeding his overall
domestic budget total by $22 billion. In December, Congress jettisoned the extra
$22 billion in domestic funding to win the President’s signature, and significantly
rearranged spending priorities in the omnibus appropriations bill cobbled together
in mid-December. Among the casualties was the ACI, which received far less than
requested so that Congress could shift money to domestic priorities that were
proposed for cuts in the President’s request. In the end, NSF won a total budget
of $6.0 billion, just $116 million or 2.0 percent more than 2007, nearly $400
million less than the request and nearly $600 million less than earlier appropriations
(see Table).
After
adjusting for inflation, the 2008 NSF increase would fall short of both 2004 and
2007 funding levels (see Figure 1). After peaking in 2004, NSF funding fell
in 2005 and 2006 but rose in 2007; the final 2008 appropriation would see NSF
lose ground once again. And once again, the NSF budget would fall far short of
authorized funding levels. As recently as August, President Bush and Congress
agreed on an America COMPETES Act which, among other things, authorized increases
for NSF in 2008 through 2010 (see Figure 1). But the final 2008 appropriation
falls well short of the authorization and puts the ten-year doubling plan for
NSF in doubt, just as earlier appropriations failed to live up to an authorized
five-year doubling plan that was signed into law in 2002 (see Figure 1).
NSF’s R&D funding, which excludes NSF’s
education and training activities and overhead costs (such as polar logistics
and administrative salaries), would total $4.5 billion, a gain of just 1.1 percent
or $48 million that represents a real cut (see Figure 1), after cuts in 2005 and
2006 and a rebound in 2007.
Figure 1. (click on the image for
PDF)
NSF’s
main Research and Related Activities (R&RA)
account, which funds nearly all of NSF’s basic and applied research and contains
NSF’s discipline-based research directorates, would increase just 0.7 percent
to $4.8 billion (see Table). Most research directorates would have received increases
between 4 and 9 percent for the second year in a row in earlier budget plans,
but now none of them are likely to even keep pace with inflation in 2008 and some
could see outright cuts depending on how NSF allocates the total R&RA appropriation
in coming weeks (see Figure 2). There could be modest increases for some key programs:
the new Office of Cyberinfrastructure (OCI), a recent spin-off from the Computer
and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) directorate, could see its funding
increase 2.3 percent to $187 million. OCI supports the procurement, development,
and operation of state-of-the-art cyberinfrastructure resources for the entire
research community. Its sister CISE directorate could gain 1.7 percent. The Mathematical
and Physical Sciences (MPS) and Engineering (ENG), strong supporters along with
CISE and OCI of the physical sciences, could gain just 1.6 percent and 1.4 percent,
respectively. Moving away from the physical sciences, the gains could turn into
cuts, for the Geosciences (GEO) directorate (down 0.8 percent to $739 million)
or the Biological Sciences (BIO) directorate (down 2.9 percent to $591 million)
and Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences (SBE; down 3.1 percent). Because
NSF has flexibility in deciding how to apportion R&RA funding among the directorates,
these increases and cuts could be smoothed out by the time NSF finalizes its 2008
spending plans.
Within
R&RA, the Integrative Activities (IA) account could climb 10.3 percent to
$253 million to become the one bright spot. There could be a large increase in
Major Research Instrumentation (MRI), a program to distribute competitively awarded
instrumentation grants to institutions for state-of-the-art research instrumentation
that would be too costly to be funded through regular NSF research awards. One
of the few specific allocations in the NSF appropriation is $115 million within
IA for the Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR), $8
million more than the request. EPSCOR assists research institutions and states
that have traditionally been underrepresented in federal R&D funding to build
research capacity. The program is currently open to 24 states, Puerto
Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands; collectively, the EPSCoR states
received just 10.4 percent of NSF R&D funds in FY 2004.
The
Office of Polar Programs (OPP), which funds polar research but also provides logistical
support for research activities at both poles and maintains the South Pole Station,
could receive $434 million, down slightly from 2007. The OPP funding would build
on a large increase in 2007 to fund research during the International Polar Year
(2007-2008) and to fund logistics costs to support that research.
The
omnibus bill retains language from the House appropriations bill encouraging NSF
to create a new program devoted to ‘transformative research,’ or research that
is revolutionary and on the cutting edge. Although language accompanying the omnibus
bill notes that much of NSF’s research portfolio could be considered transformative,
the bill nevertheless encourages NSF to create a program specifically devoted
to this type of research but declines to specify an amount.
Figure 2. (click on the image for
PDF)
Funding
for NSF research directorates would fall behind inflation in 2008 and most directorates
would remain well below 2004 levels in real terms because of real cuts in
2005 and 2006 and now 2008 (see Figure 2).
The
Major Research Equipment and Facilities Construction (MREFC) account would receive
$220 million in 2008, an increase of $29 million or 15 percent but $25 million
less than the request. MERFC would fund 7 projects in 2008, although the omnibus
bill does not specify how much money each project would receive (see Table). MREFC
funds only the construction of large scientific facilities; smaller facilities
projects, planning and design for future facilities, research instrumentation
grants, and facilities operations are funded in R&RA by the research directorates.
NSF initiated three projects in 2007 (the Ocean Observatories Initiative, the
National Ecological Observatory Network, and the Alaska Region Research Vessel)
and would start the Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory
(AdvLIGO), an upgrade to the existing LIGO in Washington and West Virginia of
the world’s most sophisticated optical interferometers, in 2008.
Congress
trimmed the request for NSF education and human resources programs but still managed
to award a slight increase of 3.3 percent to $722 million, far below the nearly
20 percent increases in earlier House and Senate appropriations bills. Education
and human resources funding in 2008 would remain more than 20 percent below 2004
levels in real terms after steep cuts in 2005 and 2006 and flat funding in 2007
(see Figure 2). The education appropriation should allow most programs to expand
slightly in 2008, with particular attention to the new Robert Noyce Scholarship
program ($15 million). But funding for this and other programs would fall far
short of the amounts envisioned in the America COMPETES Act, which formally authorized
the Noyce Scholarship and other programs and suggested ambitious funding levels
for them.
NSF Funding Mechanisms
The large proposed 2008 increases for the
research directorates could have meant a second year of gains to reverse recent
declines in competitively awarded research grants, but the final 2008 appropriation
is likely to lead to further declines instead. Looking only at competitively awarded research
grants, NSF’s core funding mechanism, NSF expected to fund 7,435 research grants
in 2008, an 8 percent increase, while at the same time increasing the average
award size to $147,200 (up 3.0 percent) after several years of flat funding. After
several years of declining success rates, NSF hoped to fund 21 percent of research
grant proposals, up slightly from 20 percent in 2007. But with the final 2008
appropriation falling so short of the request, the number of research grants could
remain flat or even fall, and the average award size could fall as well. And success
rates are likely to remain below 20 percent for most directorates.
Outlook
and Next Steps
The
2008 NSF budget is now law, and NSF will shortly announce how it plans to apportion
its funding among its directorates. It remains to be seen whether the 2008 appropriation
is a temporary setback in the ACI vision of a growing NSF budget, or whether there
is a chance for NSF increases to get back on track in the 2009 budget. The first
indication will be the President’s FY 2009 budget request due in early February.
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January 2, 2008
AAAS R&D Budget and Policy Program
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