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U.S. Dept. of Agriculture R&D in FY 2008 House and Senate Appropriations PDF
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R&D in the FY 2008 Budget Page
Supplemental
Materials: "USDA R&D Falls
in 2008 Budget," AAAS R&D Funding Update on R&D in the FY 2008
USDA Budget AAAS Analysis of R&D
in the FY 2008 Budget -
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Highlights -
Instead of a steep requested cut, both the House and Senate would add hundreds
of millions of dollars to R&D programs in the U.S. Department of Agriculture
(USDA) to give them a slight increase in 2008 (see Table). The Senate would give
slightly more than the House for a total of $2.3 billion for USDA R&D, 3.9
percent more than this year; the House’s increase would be 1.5 percent (see Table).
- On the extramural side, the National Research
Initiative (NRI) of competitively awarded research grants would increase $54 million
to a record $244 million in the Senate, slightly short of the request. The House
would provide only $190 million, but would fund additional competitive grants
in other accounts to keep competitive funding flat. Hatch Act funding would fall
from an unexpectedly large $323 million 2007 appropriation to $215 million
in the Senate and $196 million in the House, both high compared to historical
levels. After a one-year moratorium, congressionally designated projects (earmarks)
would return in both the House and Senate bills. Total extramural R&D, including
earmarks, would inch up in both the House and the Senate. - Intramural agricultural R&D in the Agricultural
Research Service (ARS) would see modest increases in both the House and the Senate
bills to $1.2 billion (see Table). The return of
earmarks in 2008 after a one-year moratorium in 2007 would cut into non-earmarked
R&D funding. USDA R&D
in FY 2008 House and Senate Appropriations On July 19, the House Appropriations Committee
approved its version of the FY 2008 Agriculture appropriations bill (HR 3161)
providing funding for the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and related food
agencies. The full House is expected to debate and approve the bill by the end
of July. The same day, the Senate Appropriations Committee also approved its version
(S 1859). Both bills contain nearly $19
billion in 2008 discretionary spending for its programs, $1 billion more than
both the current year and the President’s budget request. In February,
the Bush Administration once again proposed to reduce the USDA R&D budget,
but in a change from past budgets the cuts would have been from reductions in
core R&D programs rather than the proposed eliminations of earmarks. Most
years, Congress inserts hundreds of millions of dollars in R&D funding for
congressionally designated, performer specific R&D projects (earmarks), which
USDA proposes to cancel in the following year. But in the 2007 budget, finalized
in February, Congress chose not to earmark so the 2008 budget’s proposed cuts
are cuts to non-earmarked funding, an 11 percent or $247 million decline in USDA
R&D down to $2.0 billion (for details of USDA’s FY 2008 request, see the March
21 AAAS R&D Funding Update or Chapter 10 of AAAS
Report XXXII: R&D FY 2008.) The AAAS analysis of the final FY 2006
budget counted $331 million in USDA R&D earmarks in FY 2006, a total which
drops to $0 in 2007. The 2008 requested cuts would come from reductions in both
intramural R&D and USDA’s extramural R&D funds distributed competitively
or by formula. But thanks to the return of congressional earmarks
in 2008, both the House and Senate would provide increases for USDA R&D in
2008 to $2.3 billion (see Table). The House would
provide a 1.5 percent increase, the Senate a 3.9 percent increase, both in contrast
to the 11 percent requested cut. The House would boost USDA R&D by $281 million
over the request, $250 million from the addition of House-designated earmarks.
The Senate would add $334 million to the request, but only $141 million would
go to earmarks. In USDA’s external portfolio, a sharp reduction
in formula funding would allow for a boost to competitively awarded research funds
and a return of earmarked projects. 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
gain slightly in both the House and Senate plans to roughly $660 million, a 0.5
percent (House) to 1.2 percent (Senate) increase instead of a steep requested
cut. Although congressional appropriators would not provide the full requested
increase to the National Research Initiative, USDA’s main competitive research
grants program, the Senate would boost funding by 28 percent to $244 million while
the House would keep funding flat at $190 million. The House would also keep
competitive grants in Integrated Grants at $27 million, close to the 2007 funding
level, while the Senate and USDA request would move these grants to the NRI. Funding for earmarked Special Research Grants (SRG)
would return in both the House and Senate appropriations, after zero funding in
2007. The Senate would give $68 million to SRG in 2008 for 129 performer-specific
agricultural research projects, while the House would give $94 million to a list
of 134 partially overlapping projects; a small fraction of the total would go
to competitively awarded projects. In addition, both the House and Senate would
fund two dozen earmarked research projects in other parts of the CSREES budget.
In all, earmarks would make up 12 percent of CSREES R&D in the Senate proposal
and 18 percent in the House, meaning that earmarked R&D funding would be offset
by cuts in overall competitive and formula R&D funding within a flat total
CSREES R&D budget. 
Figure 1. (click on the image for PDF)
Funding for formula programs would decline sharply
in 2008, but there could be further cuts under the surface. The Hatch Act,
the largest funding source for formula-distributed research funds to the nation’s
land-grant universities, received a surprising boost to an unprecedented funding
level of $323 million in the final 2007 appropriation, nearly double the funding
levels of 2006 and earlier years. The Senate would provide $215 million and the
House $196 million, both down dramatically from 2007 but high compared to the
funding levels of previous years. Neither the House nor the Senate would go along
with USDA’s proposal to rescind (cancel) $130 million of the 2007 funds. But below
the surface, it appears that USDA would greatly expand the portion of Hatch Act
funding going to competitively awarded grants. Currently, 25 percent of Hatch
Act funding goes to multi-state research projects; USDA proposes to expand that
share to 60 percent, of which 38 percent would be competitively awarded. It is
unclear when USDA will fully phase in this expansion, but the move signals that
Hatch Act funding is transitioning from traditional individual state formula research
funds toward a mix of formula and competitive funding. Neither the House nor the
Senate would put the brakes on USDA’s Hatch Act shifts. Most of USDA’s intramural research is performed
in the Agricultural Research Service (ARS). ARS R&D would gain 0.8 percent in the House and 5.5 percent in the
Senate to $1.2 billion (see Table), in contrast to a steep requested cut. In Buildings and Facilities, USDA would provide
no funding in 2007 nor in the 2008 request for intramural
construction projects, but both the House and the Senate would add funds for earmarked
construction projects, $40 million in the Senate for 15 projects and $64 million
in the House for 13 projects. In Salaries and Expenses (S&E), which funds
research projects, the House would provide $1.1 billion in 2008, down 4.8 percent,
of which $101 million would be set aside for specific projects; most of these
projects are being funded in 2007 even though they were not earmarked. The Senate
would provide more than the House at $1.2 billion (up 2 percent), but would earmark
only $12 million of the total to give ARS more freedom to decide its research
portfolio. The other major USDA R&D agency is the Forest
Service, whose R&D budget would increase dramatically in both the House (up
7 percent) and the Senate (up 8 percent). 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 a growing external, competitively awarded research program. The FY 2008
USDA R&D portfolio could stabilize funding at 2007 levels in real terms, after
dramatic reductions in recent years from record highs (see Figure 1). Since
hitting a low in FY 1996, the funding trend had 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 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. Those needs have waned,
and thus funding has fallen. There had been a steady increase in congressionally
earmarked projects, but the lack of earmarks brings 2007 R&D funding down
dramatically. The 2008 congressional appropriations would bring back earmarks,
but would keep R&D funding essentially flat in the House and only slightly
ahead of inflation in the Senate. Nearly two thirds of USDA R&D is performed
in USDA’s own laboratories. ARS, Forest Service, and ERS funding goes almost exclusively
to intramural laboratories, while the slightly greater than one quarter of USDA
R&D funding going to universities and colleges comes from CSREES. These proportions
have been stable in recent years because of the division of labor between ARS
and CSREES in funding external and internal research, but this stability could
change. The current farm bill expires on September 30; Congress is trying to draft
a new five-year farm bill in the next few weeks which could restructure the USDA
agricultural R&D portfolio. Congress is considering various proposals which
could combine ARS and CSREES in a single unit, create a new National Institute
for Food and Agriculture (NIFA) that would be a separate unit to fund competitively
awarded extramural research, or create new structures and programs that would
boost competitive funding within the existing structure. These proposals, plus
other proposals to boost significantly competitive research in general and research
on crops as biofuels in particular, could lead to an expansion in USDA
R&D going to universities. But it remains too soon to tell whether next year’s
USDA R&D enterprise will look dramatically different from this year’s, since
there is an increasing chance that Congress will fail to enact a new farm bill
by October 1, and instead will simply extend the current law by a year or two.
Outlook and Next Steps The full House is expected to debate and approve
the Agriculture bill within the next week. The Senate version may not make it
to the full Senate until September because of a backlog of appropriations bills
and other bills awaiting Senate floor time. Congress
will try to send a final version of the bill to President Bush before the October
1 start of FY 2008. The President has threatened to veto any 2008 appropriations
bill that exceeds his request, as both Agriculture bills do, so there is an increasing
likelihood that the Agriculture bill will not get signed into law until well into
FY 2008. As for authorizations, most of USDA’s research programs are authorized
by the farm bill, which expires on September 30. A new farm bill could dramatically
restructure the USDA R&D portfolio, but the chances of a new 5-year farm bill
being finalized by the end of September 30 are growing increasingly dim, so the
most likely scenario is for Congress to extend current authorizations by a year
or two, leaving USDA’s R&D programs unchanged. -
July 25, 2007
AAAS R&D Budget and Policy Program
1200 New York Avenue,
NW
Washington, DC 20005
(202) 326-6607
AAAS R&D Web site: http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd
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