(This analysis is part of a
AAAS effort to enumerate congressionally designated, performer-specific
R&D projects not appearing in agency budget requests (earmarks)
in the FY 2005 appropriations process. The data in this analysis highlight
AAAS interpretations of R&D earmarks in the final FY 2005 appropriations
bills. 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.)
- R&D earmarks total $2.1 billion in FY 2005, up 9 percent from
last year, according to the AAAS analysis of congressionally designated,
performer-specific R&D projects in the FY 2005 appropriations bills
(see Table A and Figure 1).
- Although these
projects amount to only 1.6 percent of total R&D, they are concentrated
in a few key agencies and programs. Four agencies (USDA, $239 million;
NASA, $217 million; DOE, $274 million; and DOD, $1.0 billion) receive
85 percent of the total R&D earmarks, while NIH, NSF, and the new
DHS remain earmark-free. In some programs, earmarks make up 1 out of
every 5 program dollars.
- FY 2005 R&D
earmarks are up more than a third from 2002 and 2003 after a dramatic
jump last year. The total number of earmarks is increasing faster than
dollar growth, suggesting that the size of the average earmark is shrinking
in an era of tight budgets but increasing constituent demand.
FY 2005 R&D Earmarks in FY 2005 Appropriations: Earmarks Up Substantially
On November 20, Congress came to an agreement on
an FY 2005 omnibus appropriations bill (HR 4818), which incorporates
the final versions of 9 of the 13 FY 2005 appropriations bills. The
House gave final approval on December 6, and President Bush is expected
to sign the bill into law on December 8. Earlier in the year, appropriations
bills for the Departments of Defense (DOD) and Homeland Security (DHS)
were signed into law. The 1645-page omnibus bill throws together nearly
$388 billion in federal discretionary spending for FY 2005 and is filled
with budgetary maneuvers to fit under congressional budget targets,
including a 0.80 percent across-the-board cut for most non-DOD appropriations
and additional cuts for some agencies. The omnibus bill keeps funding
for domestic programs flat in FY 2005, while defense and homeland security
spending increase dramatically in FY 2005. Hidden in the omnibus bill
and the already-enacted FY 2005 Defense appropriations bill are numerous
congressionally designated, performer-specific R&D projects (R&D
earmarks). It appears that earmarked projects in all areas, including
non-R&D areas such as transportation, health care facilities, and
local environmental grants, increase again in FY 2005. For R&D earmarks,
the FY 2005 total exceeds $2 billion for the first time at $2.1 billion,
a 9 percent increase over last year’s earmarks and a greater increase
in the number of projects. (For full details of total federal R&D
in FY 2005, please see Congressional Action on R&D in the FY 2005
Budget and its accompanying preview, available
on the AAAS R&D Web site).
Within federal
appropriations for R&D are R&D earmarks of unrequested,
congressionally designated performer-specific R&D projects contained
in legislative language or committee report language attached to appropriations
bills. These projects have been added to agencies’ requested budgets
as part of the annual give-and-take between Congress and the Executive
Branch over the size and shape of agencies’ budgets.
- R&D earmarks total $2.1 billion in FY
2005. Although these projects amount to only 1.6 percent of total
R&D, they are concentrated in a few key agencies and programs (see
Table A). Four agencies (the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA; $239
million), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA; $217
million), the Department of Energy (DOE; $274 million) and the Department
of Defense (DOD; $1.0 billion) receive 85 percent of the total R&D
earmarks. Because of growth in DOD’s share, the ratio is higher than
the 80 percent share for these four agencies in FY 2004.
Figure 1.
(click on image for PDF)
- FY 2005 earmarks are up 9 percent from $1.9
billion in FY 2004, after a 32 percent increase last year compared to
2003 (see Table A and Figure 1). Within
a record R&D investment of $132.2 billion in FY 2005, up 4.8 percent,
R&D earmarks grow far faster than R&D spending as a whole. The
increase is due to an explosion in R&D earmarks in the Department
of Defense (DOD), which sees its earmarked projects top $1 billion for
the first time, up 25 percent from $825 million in FY 2004.
- The share of the R&D portfolio that is
earmarked rises to 1.6 percent from 1.5 percent last year. But because
these earmarks are highly concentrated, earmarks make up 1 out of every
5 program dollars in some R&D programs and 1 out of 4 in one USDA
program.
- The USDA
earmarks include $148 million, up dramatically from last year, for nearly
240 itemized extramural research projects, mostly in the Special Research
Grants program, with another $11 million allocated in the Agricultural
Research Service (ARS) for intramural research projects. Congress earmarks
$65 million for intramural R&D facilities construction in FY 2005
for projects not in the agency budget request, offsetting these earmarks
with a reduction in funding for the one requested construction project
in Iowa. While R&D
earmarks declined the last two years as the overall USDA R&D budget
declined, a 7.8 percent increase in USDA R&D in FY 2005 helps to
pay for an 8 percent increase in earmarks. R&D earmarks total 24
percent of all extramural R&D in the Cooperative State Research,
Education, and Extension Service (CSREES), making these a significant
drain on resources that might have gone to competitively awarded research
grants.
- The NASA
projects totaling $217 million are up 12 percent from last year, and
are found mostly in five programs within the agency’s Science, Aeronautics
and Exploration (SAE) account: Space Science, Earth Science, Biological
and Physical Research, Aero-Space Technology, and Academic Programs.
Earmarks make up 20 percent of total R&D in Academic Programs, and
smaller percentages in the other four programs. The final NASA bill
includes 40 projects in Academic Programs totaling $34 million. Although
all programs in this account are classified as R&D, the congressionally
designated projects include funds for education centers, community science
and math education initiatives, science museums, and planetariums. Meanwhile,
R&D earmarks in other NASA accounts mean the agency will have to
trim some FY 2005 program plans in order to fund earmarks. In FY 2005,
R&D earmarks appear in the Exploration Capabilities (EC) account
for the first time, reflecting the shift of some Space Science and Aeronautics
programs there.
- The DOD
budget contains $1.0 billion in R&D earmarks, an enormous increase
of 25 percent over last year, but only 1.5 percent of the total R&D
budget because of the size of the DOD R&D investment. Clearly, in
a fiscal environment where defense spending is half of all discretionary
spending and the only mission to receive a large increase, DOD becomes
an attractive target for earmarks. The FY 2005 R&D earmarks continue
the trend of increasing earmarks within a record DOD R&D budget,
itself within a record-breaking DOD budget. The earmarks are mostly
small ($10 million or less) projects, but significantly most are for
research rather than development or R&D facilities construction,
squeezing basic research and applied research budgets. Earmarks for
"6.1" (basic research) programs total $34 million, or 2 percent
of the total; "6.2" (applied research) earmarks are $270 million,
or 5 percent of the total because of a large number of medical research
projects; and "6.3" earmarks are $318 million or 4.7 percent
of the total. Earmarks in the "6.4" or higher categories of
DOD R&D are $407 million, a large dollar total but only 0.7 percent
of the total portfolio.
- DOE R&D earmarks decline slightly
from last year but remain at a high $274 million, double the FY 2003
total. Budget. The Office of Science (OS) budget contains $78 million
in R&D earmarks in FY 2005. All of these earmarks are in the Biological
and Environmental Research (BER) program; earmarks account for 14 percent
of the BER budget and leave core BER R&D programs with little to
no increase in FY 2005 even as overall OS R&D increases by 4.3 percent.
In DOE’s energy R&D, there is a surge to $122 million in
R&D earmarks, a slight increase from last year but quadruple the
earmarked total of two years ago.
- Some agencies remain earmark-free. The
National Science Foundation (NSF), the
National Institutes of Health (NIH), and
the new Department of Homeland
Security (DHS) all remain earmark-free in FY 2005. Traditionally,
NIH and NSF’s research accounts have been free of earmarks, although
in some years NSF construction projects are earmarked. FY 2005 is only
the second year of appropriations for DHS; so far, Congress has not
earmarked R&D projects in DHS, although this year earmarks appear
in other parts of the DHS budget. The Health Resources and Services
Administration (HRSA), NIH’s sister agency
within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), has $79 million
in R&D earmarks. These R&D earmarks are mostly for construction
of laboratory facilities at hospitals and university medical schools,
and are mixed in with a larger pool of earmarked funds for health care
facilities renovation and construction.
- Congress
added R&D earmarks to other R&D funding agencies, including
the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA;
$51 million), the Department
of Transportation ($45 million, mostly for projects in DOT’s smaller
bureaus), the Department of the
Interior ($12 million, mostly for projects in the U.S. Geological
Survey), and the Department of Housing and Urban Development
(HUD; $5 million for small R&D projects not related to housing in
a community development fund that is home to hundreds of other earmarks).
Definitions: What is an R&D Earmark?
For the purposes
of this analysis, R&D earmarks are defined as “congressionally designated
performer-specific R&D projects not included in agency budget requests.”
The earmarks appear in either legislative language contained in appropriations
bills, in which case they have the force of law, or appear in committee
report language accompanying appropriations bills, in which case they
are technically advisory. For all practical purposes, however, agencies
usually follow the instructions from Congress contained in committee
report language, including earmarks. When Congress designates a specific
performer or performers for a particular R&D project, these are
counted as earmarks; because AAAS definitions of R&D include investments
in R&D facilities construction, the earmarks in this analysis also
include funds provided to specific institutions for investments in R&D
major capital equipment, and also construction funds for specific R&D
facilities.
R&D earmarks
do not appear in federal agencies’ budget requests, which are released
at the beginning of the budget process in February and reflect agency
priorities. These budget requests contain detailed proposed distributions
of agency funds by mission, allocation mechanism, and often by performer.
Earmarks do not appear in agencies’ own budget requests but are added
to agencies’ budgets by Congress during the appropriations process.
Some projects not originally included in agency requests may be initiated
by congressional action in earlier appropriations cycles and may be
renewed at reduced funding levels in agencies’ requests; funds added
to specific performers by Congress above the amounts requested by the
agency are counted as earmarks.
These figures
include earmarks to all categories of R&D performers. While discussion
of the earmarks issue tends to center on earmarks to academic institutions,
this analysis also includes R&D earmarks to other categories of
performers, most prominently federal laboratories. While academic institutions
receive the bulk of the earmarks in Table A, federal laboratories, sometimes
located on university campuses, also receive earmarks as well as some
nonprofits and industrial firms.
The earmarks
counted in this analysis are a subset of R&D in the federal budget
as tracked by AAAS. Thus, the earmarks in this analysis do not include
non-R&D projects that may go to R&D performers, for example
educational or extension projects awarded to universities and colleges.
Some of these earmarks may come from the same budget accounts that fund
R&D earmarks. They also do not include construction funds for non-R&D
facilities, except when they are provided in R&D accounts.
Purpose of the AAAS Analysis
The analysis
is intended to provide timely and unbiased information for further analysis
and debate on the allocation of R&D resources in the federal budget
process, and the R&D Budget and Policy Program undertakes this analysis
to provide timely and relevant information for policymakers and members
of the science and engineering community who are concerned about methods
of allocating R&D resources. It attempts to provide additional information
to supplement existing AAAS coverage of R&D in the appropriations
process. The analysis is not a comprehensive inventory
of earmarks; nor can the analysis break out earmarks by recipient or
by state because of the difficulty in identifying and assigning locations
to multi-performer research consortia or earmarks in which the actual
performer is left intentionally vague. Also, because earmarks are somewhat
in the eye of the beholder and are ill-defined (unlike the standardized,
longstanding definitions for R&D used by AAAS and federal agencies)
this analysis necessarily relies on AAAS interpretations and judgment
calls on a project-by-project basis of what is or is not an R&D
earmark.
This analysis
does not take a position on the relative merits of agency requests vs.
congressional earmarks, or of competitively awarded funds vs. earmarked
funds.
Conclusions
Although the
Bush Administration made restraining congressional earmarks a high priority
in its first few budgets, this earmark-fighting zeal has waned considerably
recently and dwindled to zero. President Bush has never used his veto
power, and has signaled his willingness to accept whatever appropriations
bills come his way as long as they meet his overall budget targets.
And until recently, his budget targets have left plenty of room for
earmarks. The President and the last two Congresses have also presided
over some of the largest increases in discretionary spending in history;
for the first three years of his term, discretionary spending has increased
by more than 10 percent a year. By most accounts, total earmarks have
surged dramatically during this time, including R&D earmarks.
In FY 2005, discretionary
spending growth slows to nearly zero on the domestic side but still
surges on the defense side. Not surprisingly, perhaps, R&D earmarks
grow dramatically in DOD but fall slightly for all other agencies combined.
On the defense side, the growth in earmarks may represent a case of
appropriators going where the money is; on the nondefense
side, there appear to be an increasing numbers of earmarks but the average
earmark is getting smaller in tough times. In the FY 2005 omnibus bill,
there are pages and pages of earmarks for community development grants
(1032 projects in one Housing and Urban Development program), EPA water
grants (667 projects in just one EPA account), and health care facilities
(nearly 1000 projects in one HRSA account), all in greater numbers than
last year, which in turn had more projects than the year before.
But in tight budgetary times, squeezing more earmarks into a
budget required appropriators to make individual projects smaller; there
are R&D earmarks in the USDA budget as small as $1,500, a sum too
small to have been worth bothering in previous years, and dozens of
R&D earmarks in the $100,000 range.
With the
fiscal situation on the nondefense side unlikely to get better in the FY 2006 budget,
congressional appropriators will have to square constituent demands
for earmarked funds against tight spending targets. With the Bush Administration
unlikely to expend political capital against earmarking, the push for
earmarking the R&D budget will not abate in the FY 2006 budget;
the only constraint appears to be the balance between earmarks and other
spending.
(Other
AAAS R&D Funding Updates on the AAAS
R&D Web site provide detailed information on R&D in final
FY 2005 appropriations.)
- December 7, 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
