Highlights
- The Senate would provide an estimated $742 million for DOT R&D programs
in FY 2006, a slight cut of 0.3 percent (see Table).
- The Senate
would reverse proposed cuts to R&D in the Federal Aviation Administration
(FAA) with an 8.4 percent boost to $285 million, but would trim highway
R&D by 5.3 percent down to $319 million.
DOT R&D in FY 2006 Senate Appropriations
On July 21, the
Senate Appropriations Committee drafted its version of the FY 2006 Transportation-Treasury
appropriations bill (HR 3058). The House version of the bill was approved
by the full House on June 30. The bill funds all of the Department of
Transportation (DOT), as well as the Departments of Treasury, Housing
and Urban Development, and miscellaneous agencies. This week, Congress
approved an 11th extension of an expired transportation authorization
bill and hopes to give final approval to a new authorization by the
end of July.
The FY
2006 Senate Transportation-Treasury bill, along with estimates of the
pending transportation bill, would provide $64.2 billion for the total
DOT budget, an enormous increase of $4.3 billion or 7.1 percent from
this year. R&D is a relatively small part of the DOT budget and
would total $742 million in the Senate plan for FY 2006, a slight cut
of $2 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 have rejected 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. For
details of House appropriations for DOT, see the June
30 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. These programs have been authorized out of 11
temporary extensions since then. The final transportation authorization
bill may be filed as early as today (July 28) and could be signed into
law by the end of the week. 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 for FY 2006 the House and the Senate would once
again scale back the increase. While the Administration would shuffle
FHWA accounts to allow for more spending on highway R&D, Congress
would choose to maximize state and local highway spending instead. The
Senate would allocate an estimated $319 million for FHWA R&D, down
5.3 percent. Detailed allocations be available
after Congress finalizes the transportation authorization bill.
Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) R&D would total $285 million
in the Senate plan, a boost of 8.4 percent because the Senate would
add $21 million for an airport technology R&D program, restore proposed
cuts to other aviation R&D programs, and fund most of a requested
increase for a Joint Program and Development Office to develop the next-generation
air transport system in cooperation with other federal agencies. 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 version
may be debated and approved in September after the summer recess. Meanwhile,
Congress is just hours away from finalizing the transportation authorization
bill, which should be enacted into law by the end of the month.
-
July 28, 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
