Highlights
- Once again, the House would agree to the Bush Administration proposal
to eliminate the Advanced Technology Program (ATP) at the Department
of Commerce in FY 2006. The ATP has a budget of $140 million this
year. As in past years, the fate of the ATP now rests with the Senate.
- The House would look favorably
on the non-R&D Hollings Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP)
program by providing funding close to this year’s level at $106 million,
in contrast to a requested cut of almost two-thirds (see Table).
- National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration (NOAA) R&D would plummet by 23 percent to $501
million through across-the-board reductions in NOAA’s
portfolio of ocean, coastal, atmospheric, climate change, and fisheries
R&D programs. Not only would the House agree with NOAA’s
proposals to eliminate FY 2005 congressional earmarks, but the House
would make steep cuts to core NOAA programs.
- Intramural research at
the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) laboratories
would show a modest increase of 5.1 percent to $334 million (see Table).
DOC R&D in FY 2006 House Appropriations
On June 7, the House Appropriations
Committee approved its version of the FY 2006 Science, State, Justice,
and Commerce appropriations bill (HR 2682). The
House bill would provide just $911 million for Commerce R&D in FY
2006, a dramatic 20.6 percent reduction that would cut $237 million
from the Commerce R&D portfolio and bring funding down to levels
not seen in more than a decade. 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.
Because of an extensive reorganization
of appropriations bill jurisdictions, in FY 2006 the Department of Commerce
will be funded for the first time with other R&D agencies including
the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Aeronautics and
Space Administration (NASA), which were formerly funded in the now defunct
VA-HUD appropriations bill. As a result, the former Commerce, Justice,
and State appropriations bill now has “Science” in its name. The Senate
Appropriations Committee, however, has proposed a different reorganization
for its new Commerce, Justice, and Science bill: although Commerce,
NASA, and NSF will still be funded together in the Senate, the Senate
bill excludes the Department of State. The differing jurisdictions in
the House and the Senate bills will make agreeing on a final (conference)
bill extremely difficult.
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
23.0 percent or $150 million below FY 2005 while NIST R&D would
lose 18 percent of its funding (see Table).
(For details of the President’s request for Commerce R&D, please
see Chapter 13 of AAAS
Report XXX: R&D FY 2006 or
March 9 Commerce R&D Funding Update).
Once again, the House would 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 fourth time in
the last five years; the House would go along with the latest proposal.
The FY 2006 appropriation does not provide approximately $30 million
in close-out costs for ATP, which would presumably have to be found
in other NIST accounts if the program elimination becomes final.
Total NIST R&D would fall by
17.9 percent in the House bill to $379 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 $16 million in R&D funding to
$334 million, a 5.1 percent increase. This
total would be less than an even larger requested increase. For the past two years, the Administration
has requested large increases for the NIST laboratories and the elimination
of ATP. Congress has saved the ATP but found the money by cutting NIST’s intramural R&D, a pattern that could be repeated
in 2006. The House would boost nanotechnology R&D in the areas of
nanomanufacturing and nanometrology,
but the shortfall from the requested increase could keep NIST from investing
additional dollars in measurement infrastructure.
In another repeat of past
years, the House would disagree sharply with the Administration request
for funding of the non-R&D Hollings 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 on a cost-shared basis with
state governments and with users. The House would give MEP $106 million,
slightly off this year’s funding level but well above the $47 million
request which would have phased out the federal contribution to this
federal-state partnership and left MEP center funding heavily in state
hands.
Another NIST R&D program,
Construction of Research Facilities, would increase to $45 million,
less than the request but $15 million more than this year after excluding
$43 million in FY 2005 congressionally designated projects. The FY 2006
appropriation would allow for major renovations to NIST facilities in
Maryland and Colorado.
The House would make dramatic cuts to NOAA R&D for a reduction of
23 percent or $150 million down to $501 million (see Table).
The request would have reduced NOAA R&D by a dramatic 18 percent,
but the House would cut even deeper. 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 15.4 percent down to $286 million, mostly because of the
elimination of FY 2005 congressional earmarks but also from House cuts
below the requested funding levels. NOAA’s climate research program would increase slightly to
$179 million, but weather and air quality research would fall steeply
from $51 million to $38 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. The
$29 million Ocean Exploration program would be all but eliminated.
R&D in NOAA’s
other divisions would also fall steeply, such as the National Ocean Service
(NOS), whose portfolio of oceanographic research would fall 39 percent to $62
million from a combination of deleted earmarks and steep across-the-board
reductions in ocean navigation, coastal ocean science, ocean observing, and
ocean and coastal management research programs. 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 27.0 percent cut in
NMFS R&D activities down to $46 million. Similar cuts have been approved by
House Appropriations Committees in recent years, but the Senate has
traditionally supported NOAA strongly. Once again, the fate of many NOAA
programs next year will lie with Senate appropriators.
Figure 1. (click
on the image for PDF)
Next Steps and Possible Impacts
The dramatic cuts to Commerce’s
R&D portfolio in FY 2006 would represent the fourth year in a row
of decline, as shown in Figure 1, and would bring the portfolio below
$1 billion in today’s dollars for the first time since 1993. The House
cuts, if enacted, would leave Commerce R&D nearly a third below
the levels of just four years ago. Although Commerce R&D grew substantially
in the first half of the 1990s as NIST’s technology
programs and NOAA’s environmental programs gained in priority, Commerce
R&D funding has stagnated since FY 1995, with large swings due to
the up-and-down fortunes of the ATP, changing construction needs at
the NIST laboratories, and tight budgets for NOAA.
The House is expected to debate
and approve the Science, State, Justice, and Commerce appropriations bill the
week of June 13. The Senate Appropriations Committee is expected to draft its
version later this month.
-
June 14, 2005
(This analysis is one of a series of AAAS R&D Funding
Updates on FY 2006 congressional appropriations. The complete series
of AAAS R&D Funding Updates, including continually updated analyses
of R&D in FY 2006 appropriations, is available on the AAAS
R&D Web Site (http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd) in the "FY
2006 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
AAAS R&D
Web site: www.aaas.org/spp/rd
