Highlights-
The Senate Appropriations Committee has endorsed the Department of Transportation’s
(DOT) proposal to increase its R&D funding, by 11.2 percent or $92 million
to $912 million in fiscal year (FY) 2009 (see Table)
because of large requested increases for aviation R&D and highway R&D.
DOT R&D in FY 2009 Senate Appropriations
On July 10, the Senate
Appropriations Committee approved its version of the FY 2009 Transportation-HUD
appropriations bill (S 3261) providing funding for the Departments of Transportation
(DOT) and Housing and Urban Development (HUD), for possible consideration by the
full Senate in July. The Senate would spend nearly $3 billion more on the bill’s
programs in 2009 than the President’s request for a total of $53 billion in discretionary
funding, in addition to other resources for transportation programs. The Senate
would use the additional dollars to spend far more than DOT requested for the
entire range of transportation programs, especially rail and highway spending.
The
Department of Transportation (DOT) funds a broad range of highway, aviation, traffic
safety, rail, transit, and marine transportation programs. R&D is a relatively
small part of a $68 billion DOT budget but would increase 11.2 percent to $912
million in the latest Senate plan, slightly more than
the DOT request, with most of the increase going to aviation programs (see Table).
R&D funding would increase faster than the Senate’s proposal for
the total DOT budget, which would grow $2.1 billion or 3.2 percent to $67.6 billion
(see Table).
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. DOT programs
are operating under a transportation authorization bill signed into law in August
2005 that dramatically increases highway R&D funding beginning in 2006 and
extending through 2009. Nearly all the funds from the transportation authorization
bill go to the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) for state and local road
projects, mostly in formula distributions but also in congressionally designated
earmarked projects. The highway bill helped FHWA R&D climb in 2006 and 2007
to record highs. The FY 2009 budget, still based on the multi-year highway bill,
would sustain those increases with a $393 million R&D investment, an increase
of $20 million or 5.4 percent that the Senate would sustain. The surface transportation
research portfolio on highway safety, pavement technologies, highway operations,
environmental impacts, and other road topics would increase $23 million to $167
million in FY 2009 with increases across the board. The Intelligent Transportation
Systems (ITS) portfolio of innovative technologies to improve traffic flow would
also increase to $51 million, up $7 million. The FHWA budget also includes state
highway R&D, distributed to state and local governments to support their R&D
efforts, but funding for these state funds would decline $11 million or 6.4 percent
to $156 million in 2009.
Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) R&D
would receive a large increase of 24 percent in 2009 to $335 million, a reversal
of the past three DOT budget requests which proposed cuts in FAA R&D. The
Senate would approve this requested increase mostly unchanged. The FAA funds a
number of R&D efforts on aviation-related topics, including weather research,
aircraft safety technology, human factors research, and development of next-generation
technologies to improve aviation system capacity. The FY 2009 request focuses
its increases on the Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen), a suite
of technologies and operating systems envisioned to transition the U.S.
civil aviation system from radar-based to satellite-based navigation and to boost
capacity while preserving safety. Increases related to NextGen would boost funding
for both FAA’s main Research, Engineering, and Development
(RE&D) account and also the Facilities and Equipment portfolio of advanced
technology development for next-generation aviation systems. The RE&D NextGen
increases would focus on environmental research, especially on aircraft technologies
that would reduce emissions and noise.
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 (see Figure 1).
But with the transfer of aviation security R&D to the Department of Homeland
Security (DHS), 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, nearly reaching the peak funding level in 2006. The 2006 budget
actually exceeded previous highs, however, after adjusting for the Coast Guard
and FAA transfers to DHS. The 2007 and 2008 budgets retreated slightly from the
2006 peak, but the 2009 Senate appropriation would be the largest DOT R&D
budget in history for the programs that are currently a part of DOT.
Outlook
and Next Steps
The
full Senate could debate and approve the Transportation-HUD bill in July, but
could also choose not to debate it at all before the November elections. There
is now almost no chance that Congress will send a final version
of the bill to President Bush before the October 1 start of FY 2009. The
President has threatened to veto any 2009 appropriations bill that exceeds his
request; since the Senate version of the bill does so and since Congress is not
inclined to do the heavy lifting of negotiating a House-Senate compromise bill
only to see it vetoed, the bill has a long way to go before its funding levels
become final.
(This
analysis is one of a series of AAAS R&D Funding Updates on FY 2009 congressional
appropriations. The complete series of AAAS R&D Funding Updates, including
continually updated analyses of R&D in FY 2009 appropriations, is available
on the AAAS R&D web site (http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd)
in the "FY 2009 R&D" or the "What's
New" sections.)
- July 16, 2008
AAAS R&D Budget and Policy
Program
1200 New York Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20005
(202) 326-6607
AAAS
R&D Web site: http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd
