Highlights
- The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), enjoying a record R&D portfolio
this year, would see its R&D funding fall slightly by 1.3 percent
in the latest Senate budget plan (see Table).
The Senate appropriation of $2.4 billion would be far higher than House
and Administration proposals for cuts of 7.4 percent and 14.6 percent,
respectively.
- The Senate would add more than $300 million to the request to restore
earmarked intramural research, construction, and extramural research
projects that the request proposed to delete.
- Both the House and the Senate
would reject USDA’s proposals to slash formula funds in its extramural
research portfolio. Both chambers would keep Hatch Act formula funding
for land-grant colleges at $179 million, in contrast to USDA proposals
to eliminate half of this funding and shift the funds to a new $75 million
competitive research grants program for these institutions. In the Senate,
the National Research Initiative (NRI) of competitively awarded research
grants would increase to $190 million, while earmarked Special Research
Grants would fall slightly from $120 million down to $110 million.
- USDA intramural research would gain slightly in the Senate plan to $1.1
billion because of the restoration of earmarks. In intramural construction, the Senate would
go along with the request for
$59 million in 2006 to complete the renovation of the National Centers
for Animal Health in Ames, Iowa.
USDA R&D in FY 2006 Senate Appropriations
On June 23, the Senate Appropriations
Committee filed its version of the FY 2006 Agriculture appropriations
bill (HR 2744), which funds most of the U.S. Department of Agriculture
(USDA). Earlier, on June 8, the House approved its own version of the
bill. USDA’s Forest Service is funded in the Interior appropriations
bill (HR 2361), which was approved by the full Senate on June 29 following
House approval of its version on May 19. In the Senate bills, USDA
R&D funding would improve dramatically from a proposed 15 percent
cut in the budget request to a smaller 1.3 percent cut to $2.4 billion,
just short of a record funding level (see Table).
The House would be less generous but would still add millions to the
request for a 7 percent cut from this year’s funding level. Both the
House and the Senate would add back funds for earmarks that were deleted
in the request, and would also reject USDA proposals to shift formula
funds for land-grant institutions to competitive grants. (For details
of the President’s request for USDA R&D, please see Chapter
11 of AAAS Report XXX: R&D
FY 2006 or the March 3 USDA R&D
Funding Update. For details of USDA R&D in FY 2006 House appropriations,
see the June 7 R&D Funding Update.)
USDA’s extramural research grants,
nearly entirely to colleges and universities, are administered by the
Cooperative State Research, Education and Extension Service (CSREES).
Total CSREES R&D would fall almost 4 percent in both the House
and the Senate to roughly $625 million, a big improvement from a proposed
20 percent cut. The difference is that USDA proposed to eliminate
$180 million in 2005 congressional earmarks, but the Senate would restore
nearly $140 million in earmarked projects and keep formula funding stable.
Most of these earmarks are in the nearly entirely earmarked Special
Research Grants program, which USDA proposed to cut from $120 million
this year down to just $3 million in 2006; the House would provide $107
million and the Senate $110 million for a partially overlapping set
of projects. The remaining earmarks are in other parts of the CSREES
budget, and would be terminated in the 2006 request but restored in
the appropriations bills.
The National Research Initiative (NRI) of competitively awarded, extramural
research grants would receive $190 million, well short of the House’s
$215 million or the requested $250 million but still a $10 million increase
over this year. USDA also proposed to make competitive grants more
attractive to potential applicants by repealing a longstanding limit
on indirect cost reimbursements for USDA grants, currently capped at
20 percent, but both the House and the Senate would keep the limit in
place.
Both the House and the
Senate would reject USDA’s proposal to dramatically restructure formula
funds for agricultural R&D at land-grant institutions in 2006.
Hatch Act formula funding for agricultural R&D at land-grant colleges
would remain at $179 million in both Agriculture bills instead of the
USDA proposal to cut it in half to $89 million. Both bills would also
reject similar proposed cuts to other formula research grants (in “All
Other CSREES R&D” in the Table), and
both chambers are in agreement to reject USDA’s proposed alternative
to formula funds, a new $75 million competitive research grants program
just for land-grant institutions. Both bills would also cut funding
for Integrated Grants, shifting competitively awarded funds from this
program to the NRI.
Most of USDA’s intramural research
is performed in the Agricultural Research Service (ARS). ARS R&D would fall 1.4 percent or $18
million to $1.3 billion, an improvement over a 17 percent requested
cut because the Senate would restore earmarked funds. The appropriation
includes the $59 million request for the National Centers for Animal
Health in Ames, Iowa.
Congress provided $122 million for the Ames
facility in the FY 2005 budget, and the FY 2006 request of $59 million
would be sufficient to finish the major renovation project. The renovated
National Centers for Animal Health will serve as the nation’s premier
animal research and diagnostic laboratory and will enhance the nation’s
ability to respond to attacks on the food supply as a biosafety
level 3 (BSL-3) facility. But the Senate would
also provide $102 million in earmarked laboratory construction projects
at other USDA facilities to the request for a total ARS Buildings and
Facilities appropriation of $161 million, more than double the request.
The ARS research account (Salaries and Expenses) would increase slightly
to $1.1 billion because the Senate would restore more than $100 million
in earmarked projects the request proposed to cut.
The other major USDA R&D agency
is the Forest Service; the FY 2006 Senate appropriation for its R&D
is $323 million, up 3.0 percent or $9 million from this year. Although
the primary focus of its R&D portfolio is forestry and ecosystems
research, in recent years the Forest Service has emphasized its fire
science and wildfire management research portfolio as well. Most of
this research is performed in intramural laboratories, although there
is also an extramural fire science grants program that would receive
$18 million in 2006.
Impacts and Next Steps
The FY 2006 Senate appropriation would keep USDA R&D near historical
highs in inflation-adjusted dollars following peaks in 2003 and
2005 (see Figure 1). Since hitting a recent low in FY 1996, the funding
trend has been generally upward, first because the federal budget surplus
made more discretionary funds available to congressional appropriators,
then in FY 2000 and FY 2001 from the release of mandatory competitive
research funds, and then since FY 2002 because heightened concern about
agricultural terrorism and the security of USDA laboratories resulted
in millions for security upgrades and other homeland security-related
investments. But with homeland security-related construction needs waning
at locations such as Ames,
the FY 2006 Senate allocation would bring R&D funding down slightly,
though to a level that would still be the fourth-largest R&D portfolio
in USDA history.
Although NRI hits a new high in 2005 and would go even
higher in the 2006 House and Senate appropriations and USDA request, the
history of competitive agricultural research grants has been mixed in recent
years as Congress and USDA have blocked mandatory competitive programs,
directed the bulk of recent increases to facilities rather than research,
siphoned off NRI dollars to fund earmarks, and repeatedly fallen short of the
original vision of NRI as a $500 million-a-year program. Late last year, there
was a push to create a National Institute for Food and Agriculture (NIFA)
employing an extramural, peer-reviewed basic research model for agricultural
research like the National Institutes of Health (NIH); advocates hope that a
NIFA existing as a semi-independent agency within USDA would offer a higher
profile for basic agricultural research and perhaps higher dollars. The NIFA
proposal did not make it into the FY 2006 USDA request or the House and Senate
Agriculture bills, but increases for competitive grants did.
Figure 1. (click
on the image for PDF)
The full House approved its
version of the Agriculture bill on June 8. The full Senate is expected to
approve its version in July.
-
June 30, 2005
(This analysis is one of a series of AAAS R&D Funding
Updates on FY 2006 congressional appropriations. The complete series
of AAAS R&D Funding Updates, including continually updated analyses
of R&D in FY 2006 appropriations, is available on the AAAS
R&D Web Site (http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd) in the "FY
2006 R&D" or the "What's New"
sections.)
AAAS R&D Budget and Policy Program
1200 New York Ave, NW
Washington, DC 20005
(202) 326-6607; -6600
AAAS R&D
Web site: www.aaas.org/spp/rd
