On October 19, Congress sent President Clinton a final
FY 2001 VA-HUD appropriations bill (HR 5482) that gives a significant
increase to R&D in the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The
final bill boosts EPA R&D by $40 million or 6.1 percent to $686
million, an amount above the $673 million EPA request. The total
EPA budget also increases, by $395 million or 5.3 percent to $7.8 billion,
in contrast to a requested cut (see Table).
[President Clinton signed the bill into law on October 27.]
The final VA-HUD bill provides nearly $83 billion for
discretionary programs, well above the FY 2000 total of $79 billion
but slightly below the $84 billion Administration request. In the EPA
budget, however, Congress appropriated more than both the $7.4 billion
FY 2000 funding level and the $7.2 billion request to reach $7.8 billion.
The bill also funds R&D programs in the National
Science Foundation (NSF) and the National
Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), as well as other programs
in the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of Housing
and Urban Development.
While the President requested increases for most agencies
funded in the VA-HUD bill, EPA was an exception. EPA requested $7.3
billion for its total budget, a decline from $7.6 billion in FY 2000
because of a requested cut in State and Tribal Assistance Grants from
$3.4 billion to $2.9 billion. In earlier appropriations action, the
Senate would have kept total EPA funding close to the FY 2000 level
at $7.5 billion, while the House would have cut the budget significantly
to $7.1 billion. The final appropriation of $7.8 billion exceeds the
earlier House and Senate-proposed funding levels. This matches the pattern
of other conference reports, which have generally provided far more
than either the House or Senate bills, and in many cases more than the
President's request. (For details of House appropriations for EPA, please
see the June 8 AAAS R&D Funding Update;
for details of Senate appropriations, please see the September
20 AAAS R&D Funding Update.)
EPA's R&D, mostly funded in the Science
and Technology account, totals $686 million, 6.1 percent or $40
million more than FY 2000. As with the total EPA budget, this appropriation
exceeds the earlier House and Senate proposed funding levels, both of
which were below the FY 2000 level. The final R&D total exceeds
the request of $673 million, but the final bill reduces the request
for the transportation research program in the Climate Change Technology
Initiative by $26 million down to $39 million, which still leaves
funding well above the $30 million FY 2000 level. Most of the increase
in funding over FY 2000 goes to more than 30 congressionally designated
research projects, leaving most other EPA R&D programs with level
funding.
The final VA-HUD bill mostly sticks to EPA's priorities for FY 2001, except for a boost in funding for State and Tribal Assistance Grants. Although EPA requested a cut in this program from $3.4 billion to $2.9 billion, the final bill provides $3.6 billion, a 5.3 percent boost over FY 2000. Most of this money goes to state and local governments, and is perennially more popular with Congress than EPA. For Environmental Programs and Management, which funds most of EPA's operating expenses, the final bill provides $2.1 billion, a substantial 10.2 percent more than FY 2000 that nearly matches the request. The final bill adds more than 100 congressionally designated projects to this part of the budget, while at the same time subtracting $78 million from the request for programs in the Climate Change Technology Initiative. Combined with CCTI programs in the S&T account, total CCTI funding for FY 2001 is $123 million, up from $103 million in FY 2000 but little more than half the $227 million request.
The Superfund program stays even at the $1.2
billion FY 2001 funding level. Superfund continues to fund $37 million
(down $1 million from FY 2000) in research on hazardous substances.
The final bill contains provisions, originally proposed by the House,
that appropriate $138 million directly to two agencies rather than the
traditional pattern of including the funds in the EPA's Superfund budget
(see Footnote in Table). The Superfund program
traditionally transfers part of its appropriation to the National Institute
of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS, part of the National Institutes
of Health) and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry
(ATSDR) for their work on hazardous substances. The final bill bypasses
Superfund and provides $63 million to NIEHS and $75 million to ATSDR
directly. (Figures in the Table have been
adjusted to exclude these transfers or direct appropriations for all
years.)
EPA's basic and applied research support (excluding development and R&D facilities) comprises most of EPA's R&D. The EPA research portfolio is fairly well-balanced between the environmental sciences, the life sciences, and engineering research, as shown in Figure 1. Although EPA is the major environmental regulatory agency in the federal government, many other agencies have environmental responsibilities related to research, resource stewardship, and economic management of the environment, so EPA is a relatively small funding source for R&D related to the environment. In the environmental sciences, EPA accounts for only 7 percent of total federal support, while in the life sciences EPA funds only 1 percent of total federal support and in engineering research only 3 percent.
Figure 1. (click on the image to view
or download a full-size PDF version of the chart)
Nearly half of EPA's R&D is performed in the agency's own laboratories, while about a third is performed in the nation's colleges and universities, a share that has been growing in recent years. The remainder is performed by industrial firms and nonprofit institutions.
Figure 2. (click on the image to view
or download a full-size PDF version of the chart)
EPA's R&D support has been relatively stagnant
for the last few years after steady growth until FY 1994. After the
1994 elections when the Republican Party gained control of Congress,
EPA's R&D budget declined sharply and bottomed out in FY 1996 (see
Figure 2). In subsequent years, EPA's R&D budget increased again
but is still barely above the FY 1994 funding level in inflation-adjusted
dollars.
The final VA-HUD bill emerged from conference last
week, and was approved by the House and Senate on October 19. Attached
to the bill is a revised version of the Energy-Water bill, which had
been vetoed by the President. [President Clinton signed the VA-HUD/Energy-Water
bill into law on October 27.]
-October 25, 2000 (updated November 1)
AAAS R&D Budget and Policy Program
American Association for the Advancement of Science
1200 New York Ave, NW
Washington, DC 20005
(202) 326-6607
science_policy@aaas.org
http://www.aaas.org/spp/R&D
