Highlights
- The House would cut R&D in the Department of Commerce by $185 million
or 16.4 percent to $946 million in FY 2005, allocating cuts to nearly
every Commerce R&D program (see Table).
- The House has agreed to the Bush Administration’s proposal to eliminate
the Advanced Technology Program. At the same time, the House would
triple funding for the Manufacturing Extension Partnership to bring
it back to last year’s funding level.
-
The House would cut funding for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration’s (NOAA) R&D programs by 11.7 percent to $545 million.
- Only the National
Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST) intramural laboratory
R&D programs would do well in the House plan, rising 15 percent
to $326 million.
On July
8, the full House was expected to debate and approve its version of
the FY 2005 Commerce/Justice appropriations bill (HR 4754). The bill,
in addition to Department of Commerce programs, funds the Department
of Justice, the Department of State, and miscellaneous international
programs in a tight competition for shrinking resources. The House bill
would provide $946 million for
Commerce R&D programs in FY 2005, a steep $185 million or 16.4 percent
cut from this year’s funding level (see Table).
Under the House plan, funding for nearly every R&D program in Commerce
would fall substantially, and one (the Advanced Technology Program)
would be eliminated. (For details of R&D in the FY 2005 request,
see the March 16 AAAS R&D Funding Update on
Commerce R&D.)
Both of
Commerce’s two major R&D agencies—the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration (NOAA) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology
(NIST)—would see their R&D budgets slashed by the House. NOAA R&D
would fall 11.7 percent or $72 million below FY 2004 while NIST R&D
would lose nearly a quarter of its funding (see Table).
Once again, the House has voted to eliminate NIST’s
Advanced Technology Program (ATP). Although the House has voted repeatedly
to eliminate the program in previous Commerce/Justice bills, the program has
been saved every year by the Senate. In February, the Bush Administration proposed
to eliminate ATP for the third time in the last four years; the House would go
along with the latest proposal. The Administration proposed to eliminate ATP
based on its belief that other federally funded research programs are more
effective, that ATP funds have gone to major corporations that do not need
subsidies, and that ATP-funded projects are often similar to those initiated by
firms not receiving ATP support.
Total NIST R&D
would fall by 21.7 percent in the House bill to $369 million because
of the elimination of ATP, but other NIST programs would gain.
The main NIST R&D activity—Scientific
and Technical Research and Services (STRS), which funds intramural research
at the NIST laboratories—would gain $43 million in R&D funding to
$326 million, a 15.2 percent increase. This total would be less than
an even larger requested increase. Last
year, the Administration requested a similar large increase for
the NIST laboratories and the elimination of ATP. Congress saved the
ATP but found the money by cutting NIST’s
intramural R&D nearly 10 percent this year compared to last year.
In FY 2004, these cuts have already led to announcements of forced early
retirements and layoffs of NIST scientists, and delays or cancellations
of planned projects such as developing standards for voting machines.
The FY 2005 House appropriation may provide sufficient funds to avoid
such tough choices next year, although eliminating the ATP could require
$30 million or so in close-out costs which would come out of the STRS
account. The House increase should also provide sufficient funds to
invest in state-of-the-art instrumentation for the new Advanced Measurement
Laboratory on NIST’s Gaithersburg,
MD campus, which was dedicated last
month, and also provide some new funds for improvements at the NIST
Center for Neutron Research,
for advanced measurement science and standards, and for advanced manufacturing
R&D.
The House would
disagree sharply with the Administration request for funding of the
non-R&D Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP),
a program to operate a nationwide network of extension centers to disseminate
better manufacturing technologies to small- and medium-sized manufacturers.
The House would give MEP $106 million, nearly triple the FY 2004 funding
level and the FY 2005 request of $39 million, but this boost would only
restore funding back to the FY 2003 level. The FY 2004 appropriation
and the FY 2005 request confirmed the Administration’s plans to phase
out the federal contribution to this federal-state partnership, but
the House appropriation could restore the federal role.
The House would also cut NOAA R&D by a steep $72 million or 11.7 percent,
for a total of $545 million (see Table).
The budget request would have reduced NOAA R&D by a more modest
1.1 percent. Working within tight budget constraints in the overall
bill, House appropriators would cut most core NOAA programs but would
also refrain from the usual practice of handing out congressional earmarks.
In Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR), the R&D portfolio would
fall 14.7 percent down to $278 million, mostly because of the elimination
of FY 2004 congressional earmarks but also from House cuts below the
requested funding levels. NOAA’s climate research
program would stay even at $170 million. Weather and air quality research
would fall steeply from $55 million to $34 million because of deleted
earmarks and the elimination of the US Weather Research Program. Funding
for the National Sea Grant College Program would decline from $62 million
down to $60 million. Begun in 1966, Sea Grant provides research grants
to more than 200 universities to gain better understanding of marine
life and marine resources through education, outreach, and technology
transfer. R&D in NOAA’s other divisions
would also decline, such as the National Ocean Service (NOS), whose
portfolio of oceanographic research would fall 22.5 percent to $33 million.
There would be across-the-board cuts in the fisheries and resources
management research programs of the National Marine Fisheries Service
(NMFS), resulting in a 15.4 percent cut in NMFS R&D activities down
to $103 million.
Next Steps
After an expected
final House vote on July 8, the House Commerce-Justice bill will
await a companion Senate measure. The Senate is unlikely to take up
its version this summer, and perhaps not at
all, making the bill a strong candidate for inclusion in a year-end
omnibus appropriations bill. It is unclear whether there is enough support
in the Senate for the ATP and other Commerce R&D programs to reverse
the proposed House and Administration cuts.
- July 8, 2004
(This analysis is one of a series of AAAS R&D Funding Updates
on FY 2005 congressional appropriations. The complete series of AAAS
R&D Funding Updates, including continually updated analyses of
R&D by agency in FY 2005 appropriations, is available on the AAAS
R&D Web Site (http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd) in the "FY
2005 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
www.aaas.org/spp/rd
