Highlights
- Department of Transportation (DOT) R&D funding would fall 5.3 percent
to $669 million in FY 2005 in the latest House budget bill (see
Table). The House-proposed cuts would stand
in sharp contrast to a 6.7 percent increase requested by the Bush Administration.
- R&D in the
Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) would fall 9.0 percent to $226
million as aviation security-related R&D shifts from the FAA to
the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
DOT R&D in House FY 2005 Appropriations
This week,
the House of Representatives introduced a Transportation-Treasury appropriations
bill (HR 5025) that would give $58.9 billion to the Department of Transportation
(DOT) in FY 2005. The full House is expected to debate and approve the
bill the week of September 13. R&D is a relatively small part of
the DOT budget and would total $669 million in FY 2005 in the House
plan, a cut of 5.3 percent or $38 million that stands in sharp contrast
to a requested increase of 6.7 percent to $755 million (see Table).
(For details of the DOT request, see Chapter 13
of AAAS Report XXIX: R&D
FY 2005 or the February 25 AAAS R&D
Funding Update).
More than half
of the DOT budget goes to the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA),
mostly for spending out of the highway trust funds for road projects
managed by state and local governments. Transportation funding increased
dramatically beginning in FY 1999 as a result of the six-year (FY 1998-2003)
reauthorization of transportation programs known as the Transportation
Equity Act for the 21st Century (TEA-21), which governs spending
out of the highway trust funds. The law expired last September, and
a temporary funding authorization is in place through the end of September
until Congress can agree on a new reauthorization law. Another extension
into the new fiscal year will almost certainly be necessary. The old
law specified that transportation tax revenues would be devoted exclusively
to transportation, and specified formulas for allocating these funds.
As a result of burgeoning revenues from transportation taxes, DOT’s
budget climbed from $44 billion in FY 1998 all the way to $67 billion
in FY 2001. However, these revenues have dropped off significantly in
recent years as a result of a stagnant economy, and thus total DOT funding
has leveled off. In addition, the Transportation Security Administration
(TSA) and the Coast Guard transferred to the new Department of Homeland
Security (DHS) in March 2003, bringing the DOT budget down to its current
level of $58.5 billion.
In FY 2005, President
Bush’s budget would reduce DOT spending by 0.3 percent down to $58.4
billion, but the House would give DOT $58.9 billion, a slight 0.7 percent
boost over this year. Within a declining FHWA budget, however, the Bush
Administration budget requested an increase for FHWA R&D of 23.7
percent for a total of $394 million. The Administration proposed a reshuffling
of the FHWA accounts to allow for more spending on highway R&D at
the expense of funds to state and local governments, In the past, Congress
rejected similar proposals and maximized state and local funding, and
this year is no exception: the House would reject the proposed shifts
to leave FHWA R&D flat at this year’s level of $319 million. The
House FHWA total would include $77 million for R&D in the Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS)
program, up slightly from this year. The largest portion of FHWA R&D
funding goes to state and local governments for their transportation-related
research projects; this funding would increase slightly to $151 million.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) would receive $226 million for
its R&D programs in the House plan, a decline of 9.0 percent. FAA’s
R&D addresses a number of aviation-related topics, including weather
research, aircraft safety technology, human factors research, and development
of ‘free flight’ technologies to improve aviation system capacity. The
FAA’s R&D portfolio used to be much larger in the $300 to $400 million
range annually before the September 2001 terrorist attacks, but most
of its aviation security R&D portfolio transferred to the Transportation
Security Administration (TSA), now housed within the Department of Homeland
Security (DHS). FAA investments in aircraft safety technology and aviation
advanced technology development would decline in both the FY 2005 request
and the House plan.
Figure 1. (click
on the image to view or download a color, full-size PDF version of the
chart)
Because of large increases for
DOT R&D in FY 2001 and FY 2002 responding to the September 11 terrorist
attacks on U.S.
aviation, DOT’s support for R&D reached a peak in FY 2002, after adjusting
for inflation. DOT’s R&D crested in FY 1995 and then suffered a steep
decline, particularly in the FAA, as a result of efforts to bring the federal
budget into surplus (see Figure 1). FAA and FHWA R&D then increased in the
late 1990s, and with the help of emergency R&D funds for aviation security
R&D in the aftermath of September 11 rose to the FY 2002 peak. But with the
transfer of aviation security R&D to the TSA, now in DHS, recent reductions
in transportation tax revenues, and the transfer of the Coast Guard and its R&D
program to DHS, DOT R&D declined sharply in FY 2003 and held steady this
year. The House-proposed FY 2005 cuts would bring DOT R&D down to pre-9/11
levels.
The majority
of DOT’s R&D is performed by intramural laboratories and industrial
performers. Universities and colleges perform just 5 percent DOT’s R&D.
Unlike the other large R&D funding agencies, a large proportion
is performed by state and local governments. Most of this money comes
from the FHWA under formula grants determined by the highway authorization
bill.
Nearly half of
DOT’s research (excluding development and R&D facilities) is in
the engineering sciences, particularly in civil engineering, but DOT
also is a key federal funding source for research in psychology and
physics. DOT is only the sixth-largest supporter of engineering research
despite its importance in the DOT portfolio, funding just 2 percent
of all federal support for engineering. The major sponsors of engineering
research are the Department of Defense and the National Aeronautics
and Space Administration, with about a third each of total federal support,
followed by the Department of Energy and National Science Foundation.
FAA funds 2 percent of total federal support for psychology, mostly
into the role of human factors in aviation safety.
Next Steps
The full House
is expected to take up the Transportation bill the week of September
13. The Senate Appropriations Committee has not even drafted a timetable
for its version of the bill. Thus, the bill is almost certain to be
included in a year-end omnibus appropriations bill, which could be delayed
until well after October 1.
(This analysis is one of a series
of AAAS R&D Funding Updates on the FY 2005 congressional appropriations
process. 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.)
- September 9, 2004
AAAS R&D Budget and Policy Program
1200 New York Ave, NW
Washington, DC 20005
(202) 326-6607; -6600
www.aaas.org/spp/rd
