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Federal support for R&D continues to flourish in
the new era of federal budget surpluses, at least for the most favored
priorities. Although it was expected that tight statutory caps on discretionary
spending would result in a painful FY 2000 budget process of allocating
cuts, Congress and President Clinton, while technically sticking to the
caps, obliterated them in practice and competed to award large increases
for discretionary programs. Most areas of federal support of R&D receive
moderate increases in FY 2000, even after a last-minute across-the-board
cut in all discretionary spending, while selected high-priority areas
in defense and health R&D receive substantial increases.
- Total federal support for R&D in FY 2000 increases substantially
to $83.3 billion, $4.0 billion or 5.0 percent more than FY 1999, primarily
because of large increases for the Department of Defense (DOD) and the
National Institutes of Health (NIH). There are increases in R&D
funding for most agencies, but some receive increases less than the
rate of inflation or even cuts in their R&D programs (see Table
1).
- The FY 2000 R&D total is $5.4 billion above the President's request.
Final FY 2000 appropriations for DOD's R&D exceed the request by
more than $4.0 billion because of strong congressional support for increased
defense spending after more than a decade of cuts. Congress awarded
NIH $1.8 billion more for R&D than it had requested. Most other
agencies received less for their R&D programs than requested (see
Table 1).
· Nondefense
R&D totals $40.9 billion, an increase of 7.1 percent or $2.7 billion
over FY 1999, the first time the federal civilian investment exceeds
$40 billion. Nearly all of the substantial increase is due to a $2.2
billion or 14.4 percent boost for NIH R&D. Excluding NIH, however,
nondefense R&D rises only 2.4 percent to $23.7 billion, barely
ahead of the expected inflation rate of 2.0 percent. Funding for nondefense
R&D in FY 2000 is 12.1 percent higher than the FY 1994 level in
inflation-adjusted terms, but this is due to increases for NIH. If
NIH is excluded, nondefense R&D is 4.4 percent below the FY 1994
level in inflation-adjusted terms (see Table A).
· After a decade
of cuts or only modest increases, total defense R&D increases
3.1 percent to $42.5 billion. The "Science and Technology"
portion of DOD's budget (encompassing basic and applied research plus
exploratory technology development) increases by 11.0 percent to $8.7
billion.
- Basic research is a high priority in FY 2000 appropriations. Federal
support for basic research is expected to total $19.1 billion in FY
2000, an increase of $1.8 billion or 10.6 percent (see Table
2). The increases, however, go mostly to life sciences and medical
research funded by NIH. Although the total for basic research is $1.0
billion higher than the request, the President's request would have
spread increases more evenly among the agencies.
- The total NIH budget in FY 2000 is $17.8 billion (up $2.2 billion
or 14.3 percent), but $3.0 billion is withheld until September 29, 2000.
In FY 2000, NIH provides, for the first time, more than half of total
federal support for basic research.
- Health-related R&D ($18.7 billion, up 14.1 percent) and energy
R&D ($1.3 billion, up 9.3 percent) are clear priorities in the FY
2000 budget by mission (Table 3). Defense
R&D increases by $1.3 billion or 3.1 percent to $42.5 billion. Once
again, it is a majority of the federal R&D portfolio, even though
the Clinton Administration request would have made nondefense R&D
more than half of the portfolio for the first time since FY 1980.
- Information technology (IT) research was a high priority for the Clinton
Administration in the FY 2000 request. The Administration proposed $366
million for a new six-agency Information Technology for the 21st Century
(IT2) initiative to support long-term fundamental research
in IT. Though not labeled as IT2, new fundamental research
activities in IT receive $235 million in FY 2000, including $126 million
for the National Science Foundation (NSF) and $60 million for DOD.
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