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Dept. of Homeland Security R&D in FY 2007 Senate Appropriations PDF
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R&D in the FY 2007 Budget Page
Supplemental
Materials: "DHS R&D Falls
Steeply In House Plan," AAAS R&D Funding Update on DHS R&D in
FY 2007 House Appropriations "DHS
R&D Falls in 2007 Budget," AAAS R&D Funding Update on R&D
in the FY 2007 DHS Budget AAAS Analysis
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| Highlights -
The Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) R&D funding seems almost certain
to fall for the first time in 2007, after the Senate recently joined the House
and the Administration in cutting DHS R&D. The Senate’s 2007 appropriation
would provide $1.0 billion, $236 million or 18 percent less than the current year
and halfway between a smaller requested cut and an even steeper House-approved
cut (see Table). The total DHS budget, however, would
keep increasing. -
After much effort to consolidate the new department’s R&D into one Directorate
for Science and Technology (S&T), some R&D programs are now moving out,
motivated partially by congressional dissatisfaction over S&T’s
management performance. The radiological and nuclear countermeasures R&D portfolio
moves from S&T to a separate Domestic Nuclear Detection Office (DNDO) account
in 2007. Although Congress continues to question the wisdom of moving DNDO away
from the rest of DHS R&D, the Senate bill would boost DNDO R&D from $209
million within S&T to a separate $234 million. The Senate would also move
explosives R&D related to aviation security out of S&T and back to the
Transportation Security Administration (TSA). -
Funding for nearly all DHS R&D activities would decline from previous years.
Only DHS R&D activities in cybersecurity, and radiological
and nuclear countermeasures would increase in the Senate plan. -
University and Fellowship Programs funding would drop $12 million to $50 million
in 2007. 
Figure
1. (click on the image for PDF) DHS R&D in FY 2007 Senate Appropriations On
June 29, just before a week-long Fourth of July recess, the Senate Appropriations
Committee approved its version of the FY 2007 Homeland Security appropriations
bill (HR 5441), which funds the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The full
Senate may debate and most likely approve the bill later this month. The House
approved its version of the bill on June 6. The
DHS budget continues to be a high priority for the Bush Administration and for
Congress; both would keep the DHS budget increasing in tough budgetary conditions.
But it is a different story for the DHS R&D portfolio: after starting from
virtually nothing three years ago and rapidly ramping up its R&D capabilities
to become the seventh-largest R&D funding agency, DHS R&D in FY 2007 would fall for the
first time, by 18.4 percent to $1.0 billion in the Senate appropriation (see Table and
Figure 1). With DHS itself requesting a 10.3 percent cut and the House recently
approving a steep 24 percent cut, it now seems certain that the final 2007 DHS
R&D budget will be far smaller than the current year, in a broad-based retrenchment
that would affect nearly all parts of the DHS R&D portfolio. (For details
of the President’s request for DHS R&D, please see Chapter 12 of AAAS Report XXXI: R&D
FY 2007 or the February 28 DHS
R&D Funding Update. For details of House appropriations, see the May
31 R&D Funding Update.) This
year, nearly all DHS R&D programs have their home in the Directorate
of Science and Technology (S&T) after several years of consolidation, but
Congress and DHS are now undoing this consolidation because of disenchantment
with the directorate’s performance so far. The S&T Directorate has responsibility
for setting homeland-security R&D goals and priorities, coordinating homeland
security R&D throughout the federal government, funding homeland security
R&D, facilitating the transfer and deployment of technologies for homeland
security, and advising the DHS Secretary on all scientific and technical matters.
In 2006, only Coast Guard (CG) R&D remains separate within the Coast Guard
appropriation at $19 million, although DHS had earlier proposed to shift funding
to S&T; the Senate would provide $18 million in 2007. But in 2007, the consolidation
would reverse as the radiological and nuclear countermeasures portfolio migrates
out of S&T to a separate Domestic Nuclear Detection Office (DNDO) in the request;
both the House and the Senate have now agreed to the move, and the Senate goes
further by also moving most of the explosives countermeasures portfolio out of
S&T back to where it came from, the Transportation Security Administration
(TSA). The
Domestic Nuclear Detection Office (DNDO), which funds the radiological and nuclear
countermeasures portfolio, begins operations in 2006 within the S&T Directorate,
but would move to a separate budget account in 2007. The DNDO will develop, acquire,
and support a domestic system to detect and report terrorist attempts to transport
or use radiological or nuclear materials. The total DNDO budget of $334 million
in 2006 would increase dramatically to $442 million in 2007 in the Senate plan,
but this would be almost $100 million less than the $536 million request. Subtracting
$178 million in procurement of nuclear detection devices for U.S.
ports of entry and $30 million in management costs for the newly independent office
would leave $234 million for R&D, up from $209 million in 2006 and just $123
million the year before. The House would provide more for both the DNDO total
budget and DNDO R&D, but both chambers trimmed the even larger requested increase
in order to shore up funding for other homeland security priorities. Both the
House and the Senate also express their concerns about the effectiveness of this
new organization and criticize DHS for not providing enough information about
how the Office will effectively perform its missions, in particular how DNDO will
coordinate with the many other government agencies both inside and outside DHS
that will ultimately implement radiological and nuclear detection systems at U.S.
ports of entry and other locations. The Senate’s concern is strong enough that
its bill withholds $80 million of the 2007 appropriation until DNDO establishes
interagency agreements with each of its other government partners that clearly
identify each partner’s roles, responsibilities, and coordinating mechanisms in
radiological and nuclear detection. Explosives
countermeasures funding would also move around in 2007. Civil aviation explosives
detection R&D transferred from the Transportation Security Administration
(TSA) in 2005 to an R&D Consolidation account in 2006 and would go to the
Explosives Countermeasures portfolio in the 2007 request and House appropriation,
but the Senate would move the portfolio right back to TSA at a level of $82 million,
plus another $5 million to remain in the Explosives Countermeasures account for
non-aviation explosives R&D. The Senate expresses its displeasure at the S&T
Directorate for failing to provide detailed information about this portfolio and
for failing to reach an agreement with TSA for what its R&D priorities should
be. To express this displeasure, the Senate would hand this portfolio, mostly
performed at the Transportation Security Laboratory in New
Jersey, back to the TSA. If this transfer prevails, the
laboratory will have changed hands from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)
to the newly created TSA to the new S&T Directorate back to the TSA all in
this decade. 
Figure
2. (click on the image for PDF) The
Senate would leave just $712 million in R&D for the S&T Directorate to
manage in 2007, little more than half the $1.3 billion the directorate has
this year, although the House would go even further down to just $668 million.
The Senate joins the House in expressing its disappointment with how the S&T
Directorate is managing its portfolio, describing the directorate as “a rudderless
ship without a clear way to get back on course” in language accompanying the bill
and criticizing its lack of clear research goals, absence of detailed budget information,
mystifying accounting conventions, and even an inability to spend past appropriations
it has been given. S&T has roughly $250 million in past appropriations that
it has not been able to obligate, which prompted the House to approve a floor
amendment in June transferring $107 million from its S&T appropriation to
other homeland security accounts; the Senate would rescind $145 million of previously
appropriated funds from S&T. The Senate directs DHS to immediately develop
a detailed 5-year research plan, and separately withholds $60 million in management
costs funding until a detailed accounting of overhead and management costs for
the R&D portfolio is delivered. The House would go even further by withholding
$400 million and by releasing these funds only after DHS provides more detailed
budget information on cost estimates, evidence of improved financial management
controls, and better performance measures to the House Appropriations Committee.
After a 2006 budget
in which there were ups and downs for the first time in the R&D portfolio
after nothing but ups in the first few years, the cuts would far outnumber
the increases in both the 2007 request and the House and Senate plans (see Table
and Figure 2). Funding for many areas would decline for the second year in
a row. Other than radiological and nuclear countermeasures, only the cybersecurity portfolio (up $1 million to $18 million) would
increase in 2007 (see Table). All other DHS R&D areas would see cuts in 2007;
the apparent increase in R&D for DHS Agencies would be due to transfers from
the R&D Consolidation account. The Counter MANPADS portfolio would plummet
from $109 million down to $40 million, primarily because the development phase
of this project would end in 2006 with the production of prototypes. Man Portable
Air Defense Systems (MANPADS) are shoulder-mounted portable air missiles that
have been used (unsuccessfully so far) against passenger aircraft. Within
the diminishing total, R&D against weapons of mass destruction dominates the
DHS R&D portfolio (see Figure 2). Defenses against biological, chemical,
explosive, radiological, and nuclear threats continue to make up nearly three-quarters
of the R&D investment, but of these areas only the radiological and nuclear
R&D portfolio would increase in the 2007 Senate plan. Biological
countermeasures would continue to be the largest portfolio with $327 million in
both the Senate plan, down 13 percent from 2006. DHS’ biodefense
effort works with the Department of Defense (DOD), the National Institutes of
Health (NIH), the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and other agencies. Construction
of the National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures
Center (NBACC) continues in FY 2006 and 2007 toward a target completion date of
2008. NBACC will be part of a biodefense complex of
DHS, NIH, and DOD facilities at Fort Detrick, Maryland;
groundbreaking on the facility took place last week. The
Senate would also reduce the Chemical Countermeasures R&D portfolio to $75
million, 20 percent below this year, despite increasing congressional concern
over the vulnerability of chemical plants or transported chemicals to terrorist
attacks. The House would reduce it even further to $45 million. The House explains
the dramatic reduction by noting that other federal agencies have important roles
in this type of research, without specifying who they are or how they are to coordinate
with DHS. Funding
for University and Fellowship Programs would fall $12 million to $50 million in
2007, after a similar cut in 2006. But the House and Senate note that this program
has not yet obligated as much as $68 million in previously appropriated funds,
so that the cut should have less impact than at first glance. This program funds
university-based Centers of Excellence that are multi-year university consortia
to perform R&D on homeland security-related topics, Cooperative Centers that
are multi-agency university centers, and also fellowships to encourage U.S.
students to pursue scientific and technical degrees in areas of study related
to homeland security. There are now five DHS Centers of Excellence, the latest
awarded in December 2005 to Johns Hopkins
University and partners for the National
Center for the Study of Preparedness
and Catastrophic Event Response. The FY 2007 request would continue funding for
these centers and would leave open the possibility of a sixth center. But the
declining budget would not allow for any more university centers, stopping short
of the up to 10 centers envisioned three years ago when DHS was founded. On the
fellowships side, DHS would support 200 students and scholars (down significantly
from 300 this year), and also up to ten postdoctoral fellows and up to five AAAS
fellows to participate in DHS research with the resources provided in the FY 2007
request. Outlook
and Next Steps The
full Senate may debate and approve the Homeland Security bill in July. The House
has already approved its version, so it is possible that the bill will be one
of the few appropriations bills to emerge from House-Senate conference and be
signed into law before the October 1 start of the new fiscal year. DHS
R&D, after a rapid ramp-up phase, now appears to be a mature R&D portfolio
and subject like other R&D funding agencies to cuts because of the tight budget
situation facing domestic programs. As shown in Figure 1, DHS began life with
only a few R&D laboratories and programs that it inherited from USDA, DOE,
and DOD, unlike the massive transfer of personnel and capabilities that happened
in the rest of the new department. From a transfer of less than $300 million of
programs in 2002, DHS began rapidly creating new R&D capabilities after its
foundation in FY 2003 (see Figure 1), adding portfolios on long-neglected technology
areas to address homeland security, establishing relationships with existing national
laboratories and federal laboratories, and setting up new structures for funding
external R&D. In the past few years, DHS has set up an Office for National
Laboratories that coordinates DHS interactions with DOE national laboratories
possessing expertise in homeland security. DHS has also set up its own FFRDC,
the Homeland Security Institute (HSI), and has also consolidated R&D activities
at laboratories it inherited from other departments. The extramural R&D portfolio
in the S&T directorate is now managed by the
Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Agency (HSARPA), modeled on
the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in the Department of Defense
(DOD). HSARPA awards extramural grants for basic and applied research to promote
revolutionary changes in homeland security technologies; develops and tests potential
homeland security technologies; and accelerates or prototypes the development
of homeland security technologies to get them ready for deployment. But
after DHS finished its start-up phase in 2005, budget growth slowed down in 2006
and would reverse in 2007 (see Figure 1). (This analysis is one of a series
of AAAS R&D Funding Updates on FY 2007 congressional appropriations. The complete
series of AAAS R&D Funding Updates, including continually updated analyses
of R&D in FY 2007 appropriations, is available on the AAAS
R&D Web Site (http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd)
in the “FY 2007 R&D” or the “What’s
New” sections.)-
July 6, 2006
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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