Highlights
- Department of Transportation (DOT) R&D funding is in limbo as Congress
struggles to reauthorize transportation programs, but the House would
provide an estimated $727 million for DOT R&D programs in FY 2006,
a cut of 2.4 percent (see Table). Pending
the outcome of transportation authorization negotiations, there would
be a modest increase in highway R&D to $345 million.
- R&D in
the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) would decline 6.5 percent
to $246 million in the House plan, mirroring similar House-approved
cuts to aeronautics research in NASA and aviation security R&D in
the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
DOT R&D in FY 2006 House Appropriations
On June 30, the
House of Representatives finished the first phase of its FY 2006 appropriations
process by debating and approving its version of the FY 2006 Transportation-Treasury
appropriations bill, the last of its 11 appropriations bills to win
approval. The bill funds all of the Department of Transportation (DOT),
as well as the Departments of Treasury, Housing and Urban Development,
and miscellaneous agencies. The same day, the House approved an eighth
extension of an expired transportation authorization bill as Congress
struggles to reauthorize highway and transit programs.
The FY 2006 House
Transportation-Treasury bill, along with estimates of the pending transportation
bill, would provide $62.8 billion for the total DOT budget, an increase
of $2.8 billion or 4.6 percent from this year. R&D is a relatively
small part of the DOT budget and would total $727 million in the House
plan for FY 2006, a cut of 2.4 percent or $17 million in contrast
to a requested increase (see Table). Although
the President’s budget request would have given DOT’s R&D portfolio
the largest percentage increase among the major R&D funding agencies,
the House and the Senate are likely to reject the increase, reflecting
a perennial give-and-take between DOT and Congress over transportation
spending priorities. (For details of the President’s request for DOT
R&D, please see Chapter 13 of AAAS Report XXX: R&D FY 2006 or the March 2 DOT R&D Funding Update).
Transportation
funding is unusual in that although funds are appropriated, as they
are for other discretionary programs, minimum funding levels each year
are guaranteed by transportation authorization bills. Transportation
appropriators must provide the funds necessary to meet these guarantees,
occasionally adding to them or modifying them, before appropriating
funds for programs outside the authorization bills. 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. Trust fund spending is guaranteed in
multi-year authorizations to give state and local governments predictability
as they plan multi-year projects. The last highway and transit transportation
authorization bill covered fiscal years 1998-2003, and expired at the
end of September 2003. Congress has been unable to agree on a new authorization
bill, so these programs have been authorized out of temporary extensions
since then. Congress is now in final negotiations over a new bill, but
was unable to finish work before the seventh extension expired on June
30 so lawmakers instead passed an eighth extension into July. In the
absence of a final authorization, only preliminary estimates of FY 2006
funding for highway and transit DOT R&D programs are available.
(FAA programs are authorized under a separate aviation authorization
bill, which is still in effect.)
Nearly all the
funds from the transportation authorization bill go to the Federal Highway
Administration (FHWA) for state and local road projects. The Bush Administration
budget would increase FHWA R&D by 32.0 percent for a total of $445
million. Similarly large proposed increases in past years have been
denied by Congress, and at this stage of the process it appears that
the House would once again scale back the increase. While the Administration
would shuffle FHWA accounts to allow for more spending on highway R&D,
the House would choose to maximize state and local highway spending
instead. The House would allocate an estimated $345 million for FHWA
R&D, up 2.3 percent. Detailed allocations will not be available
until after the House approves the final transportation authorization
bill.
Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) R&D would total $246 million
in the Transportation-Treasury bill, a cut of 6.5 percent that would
mirror other agencies’ proposed and House-approved cuts in aviation
and aeronautics R&D. At the National Aeronautics and Space Administration
(NASA), aeronautics research would fall 6 percent down to $906 million
in the House Science-Commerce-Justice-State bill, while the Department
of Homeland Security (DHS) would reduce funding for aviation security
R&D from $178 million down to roughly $100 million in FY 2006 in
the latest House plan. The President’s budget proposed similar cuts.
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 Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in 2003.
Figure 1. (click
on the image for PDF)
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 (see Figure 1). But
with the transfer of aviation security R&D to the DHS, recent reductions
in key programs, and the transfer of the Coast Guard and its R&D
program to DHS, DOT R&D declined sharply in FY 2003 and 2004 before
rebounding this year.
Next Steps
The full House
approved the Transportation-Treasury bill on June 30. The Senate Appropriations
Committee is expected to draft its version in July. Meanwhile, Congress
has approved yet another extension of authorizations for highway and
transit programs through the end of July to give lawmakers even more
time to come to a final agreement on a transportation authorization
bill.
- June 30, 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
