Highlights
- In a sharp reversal from
steep cuts in the House appropriation and the request, the Senate
would dramatically increase Department of Commerce R&D by nearly
11 percent to $1.3 billion in FY 2006 (see Table).
- The Senate
would keep the Advanced Technology Program (ATP) funded at this year’s
budget of $140 million next year, in sharp contrast to House and
Administration plans to eliminate it.
- The House
and the Senate would agree, however, to sustain 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). The
two chambers would also agree on a increase
of 6 percent to intramural research at the National Institute of Standards
and Technology (NIST) to $335 million (see Table).
- The House and
the Senate could not disagree more strongly on R&D funding in the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which would
climb 6.5 percent in the Senate plan but plummet 23 percent in the House.
DOC R&D in FY 2006 Senate Appropriations
On June 23, the Senate Appropriations Committee approved
its version of the FY 2006 Commerce, Justice, and Science appropriations
bill (HR 2862), following full House approval of its version a week
earlier. The Senate bill would
provide $1.3 billion for Commerce R&D in FY 2006, a large
10.8 percent increase that would be in sharp contrast to House and Administration
plans to slash the portfolio below the $1 billion mark. Unlike the
House, which would cut funding for nearly every R&D program in Commerce
and eliminate one (the Advanced Technology Program) entirely, the Senate
would do the opposite and increase funding for a broad range of Commerce
R&D programs.
Because of an
extensive reorganization of appropriations bill jurisdictions, in FY
2006 the National Science Foundation (NSF)
and NASA will be funded for the first time
with the Departments of Commerce and Justice. NSF and NASA were formerly
funded in the now defunct VA-HUD appropriations bill alongside the Departments
of Veterans Affairs and Housing and Urban Development. As a result,
the former Commerce, Justice, and State appropriations bill in the House
now has “Science” in its name. The Senate version of the bill, however,
has a different group of agencies: although Commerce, Justice, NASA,
and NSF are still 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 increase dramatically in the
Senate plan. NOAA R&D would climb 6.5 percent to $693 million,
while NIST R&D would gain 16.4 percent to reach $537 million
(see Table). Both agencies would have seen
steep cuts in the House and Administration plans. (For details of the
President’s request for Commerce R&D, please see Chapter
13 of AAAS Report XXX: R&D
FY 2006 or the March 9 Commerce
R&D Funding Update. For details of R&D in House appropriations,
see the June 14 R&D Funding Update).
In a repeat of past budget battles, the Senate would save the Advanced
Technology Program (ATP) in NIST after
the House and the
Bush Administration proposed eliminating it. The FY 2006 appropriation
of $140 million would match this year’s budget, and would set aside
at least $60 million for new grant awards. In language accompanying
the bill, the Senate strongly praises ATP’s
accomplishments and returns on investment, and calls the program critical
to U.S.
industries facing global competition.
Total NIST R&D
would gain a staggering 16.4 percent in the Senate bill to $537 million. The main NIST R&D activity—Scientific and Technical Research and Services
(STRS), which funds intramural research at the NIST laboratories—would
gain $18 million in R&D funding to $335 million, a 5.7 percent increase
that would nearly match the House appropriation. 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.
In another repeat
of past years, both the Senate and 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. Both the House and the Senate agree on $106 million for MEP,
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.
The largest
gain in the NIST portfolio would be for Construction of Research Facilities,
which would see its R&D funding nearly triple from $30 million this
year to $88 million next year in the Senate plan for major renovations
to NIST facilities in Maryland
and Colorado. This account
also contains funding for $43 million in congressionally designated
projects this year; while the House would not add new projects in FY
2006, the Senate bill would provide $111 million in earmarked funding
for non-R&D projects in South Carolina,
Mississippi, and Alabama,
far away from NIST facilities. Although
most congressional earmarks are written into report language accompanying
the bill, making them theoretically optional, these Senate earmarks
are written into the bill itself and would carry the force of law if
they make it into the final bill.
The Senate would boost NOAA R&D by 6.5 percent to $693 million, in
sharp contrast to steep cuts to the $500 million range for the House
and the Administration (see Table). Once
again, the Senate bill looks favorably on last year’s U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy report, “An
Ocean Blueprint,” reaffirming NOAA’s leading
role in U.S.
ocean policy and calling on dramatic expansions in NOAA ocean investments,
including ocean-related research. The Senate bill criticizes NASA for
cutting most of these ocean programs in the FY 2006 request. Not surprisingly,
the National Ocean Service (NOS) R&D portfolio would receive the
largest increase of 19.4 percent to $121 million for its portfolio of
ocean observations, aquaculture, and oceanography R&D. NOAA’s
largest R&D unit, Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR), would
receive a 12.5 percent boost to $380 million for R&D, including
boosts for several key Ocean Commission programs. The Senate would provide
$72 million for the National Sea Grant College Program, up from $62
million this year. 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 House would all but eliminate the $29 million Ocean Exploration
program, but the Senate would sustain it at $30 million. Elsewhere in
OAR, NOAA’s climate research program would
increase slightly to $184 million, and weather and air quality research
would climb from $51 million to $72 million.
Next Steps and Possible Impacts
The Senate-proposed
increases to Commerce’s R&D portfolio would reverse two years of
decline, as shown in Figure 1, but the House cuts would bring the portfolio
below $1 billion in today’s dollars for the first time since 1993. If
past patterns hold true, the final FY 2006 appropriations is likely
to be roughly midway between the House and Senate marks, suggesting
a final budget of roughly $1.1 billion at this year’s funding level.
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 Senate is
expected to debate and approve the Commerce, Justice, and Science appropriations
bill in July. Because the House-approved version of the bill includes
the Department of State, which the Senate would fund in another appropriations
bill entirely, the House-Senate conference to resolve differences is
expected to extremely difficult and may not conclude until the fall.
Figure 1. (click
on the image for PDF)
-
June 29, 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
