| Emerging R&D Issues: Earmarks
In September 2001, OMB Director
Mitch Daniels re-opened the R&D earmarks debate when he requested
that members of the academic research community refrain from seeking earmarks
as part of an Bush Administration effort to streamline federally funded
research and contain overall discretionary spending. Earmarks, according
to Daniels, were putting a strain on some government science budgets and
forcing appropriators to forego research projects that would otherwise
merit funding. This came in the wake of earlier efforts to monitor R&D
earmarks and explore their implications for the practice of science. In
the early 1990s, the late George E. Brown, Jr. used his position as Chairman
of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology to hold hearings
on the rise of earmarks related to the performance of federally funded
scientific research. At roughly the same time, the Chronicle
of Higher Education initiated an annual survey tracking the incidence
of academic earmarks – most of which relate to scientific research – in
the federal appropriations process.
Figure 4. (click on image to view or download a full-page
color PDF version of the chart)
Earmarks in the
R&D context raise specific concerns over the purported trade-off between
scientific norms and economic necessity. Opponents point out that such
earmarks reduce the overall quality of science because they circumvent
the peer-review process, thereby weakening a key cornerstone of the traditional
scientific ethos. Defenders of the practice, however, maintain that the
pursuit of R&D earmarks is an important strategy in the effort “spread
the wealth” and help smaller research institutions compete with their
wealthier counterparts.
This publication
takes no position on the economic, political or scientific wisdom of R&D
earmarks. However, because the topic is likely to remain of interest to
policymakers and members of the research community who are concerned about
the allocation of R&D resources, it does offer an analysis of R&D
earmarks in the FY 2002 and now the FY 2003 federal appropriations process.
For the purposes of this analysis, R&D earmarks are defined as “congressionally
designated performer-specific R&D projects not included in agency
budget requests.”
As
Table A and Figure 4 show, R&D earmarks
declined slightly in the FY 2003 budget to $1.4 billion, down from $1.5
billion in FY 2002. This decline happened despite a record-setting increase
in the total R&D budget to $117 billion, meaning that congressionally
designated, performer-specific R&D projects are a smaller percentage
of the total R&D portfolio than last year. The share of R&D earmarks
in the total federal R&D portfolio declines from 1.4 percent last
year to 1.2 percent in FY 2003 despite, by all accounts, a record number
and dollar amount of earmarks in the total appropriated budget of $763
billion (FY 2003).
It
appears that earmarked projects in non-R&D areas such as transportation,
health care facilities, and local environmental grants increased, but
R&D earmarks ran counter to the general trend. Four agencies (the
U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA; $297 million), the National Aeronautics
and Space Administration (NASA; $190 million), the Department of Energy
(DOE; $138 million) and the Department of Defense (DOD; $426 million)
receive nearly three-quarters of the total R&D earmarks. (For more
details on R&D earmarks in FY 2003, please see the special R&D
Earmarks in the FY 2003 Budget analysis on the AAAS
R&D web site.)
Although OMB and the Bush Administration
made restraining congressional earmarks a high priority of the Administration
in 2001, his powers of persuasion were no match for congressional appropriators’
jealously guarded power to determine the allocation of funds, and his
earmark-fighting zeal moderated in 2002. Although Daniels continued to
argue against earmarks, the Administration and Congress appeared to reach
an agreement in the FY 2003 budget process that Congress could allocate
funds as it chose as long as the overall budget totals added up to no
more than the President’s request. So while the FY 2003 discretionary
spending total of $763 billion approved by Congress matches the President’s
request, Congress rewrote the budget request extensively and added, according
to preliminary estimates, billions of dollars in earmarked projects in
what may turn out to be a new record. But R&D earmarks decline, while
it appears that non-R&D earmarked projects in transportation, community
development grants (nearly 900 projects in one Housing and Urban Development
program), EPA water grants (nearly 500 projects in just one EPA account),
and health care facilities (more than 450 projects in one HRSA account)
hit new heights. And two of the largest sources of research funding, NIH
and the R&RA part of NSF, remained free of performer-specific designations.
|
