Highlights
- Congress has come to an
unusually early agreement on a final budget for the Department of the
Interior. In FY 2006, Interior R&D totals $620 million, a slight
gain of 0.8 percent over this year
(see Table).
- Congress has reversed proposed cuts to R&D in the U.S. Geological
Survey (USGS) and instead has agreed on an increase of $13 million or
2.5 percent to $555 million, after
reversing steep proposed cuts to the USGS mineral resources R&D
program.
- R&D funding
for Interior would fall or remain flat for the sixth year in a row.
USGS R&D in FY 2006 Conference Appropriations
On July
26, a House-Senate conference committee agreed on a final version of
the FY 2006 Interior and Environment appropriations bill, the first
of the FY 2006 appropriations bills to make it through conference. The
bill funds most of the Department of the Interior as well as the Smithsonian
Institution, the Forest Service, and for the first time the Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA). Tight budget limits gave negotiators fits
as they struggled to wrap up the bill, and in the end they inserted
an across-the-board cut of 0.48 percent for all programs to bring the
bill’s spending total down. Congress is expected to give final approval
by the end of the week, and President Bush is expected to sign it into
law in early August, giving Interior a final budget before the October
1 start of the new fiscal year for the first time in a decade. The
final Interior/Environment bill provides $620 million
for Interior R&D in FY 2006, a slight increase of $5 million
or 0.8 percent above FY 2005 that stands in sharp contrast to a cut
of 6 percent contained in the President’s request (see Table).
The Department
of the Interior manages most of the publicly owned lands in the United
States, from the national park system
to Indian lands to publicly owned mines. The U.S.
Geological Survey (USGS) is the primary sponsor of R&D in Interior.
USGS is one of the leading federal sponsors of earth sciences research,
along with the Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation,
and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Within the earth
sciences, USGS is particularly important in geological hazards research,
including research on earthquakes and volcanoes. USGS is also a leading
sponsor of water resources research and biological research. Nearly
90 percent of this research is conducted within Interior labs to address
the science needs of Interior’s other agencies.
In the
FY 2006 budget request released in February, the Bush Administration
requested $934 million for the USGS total budget in FY 2006, $2 million
or 0.2 percent less than this year (see Table).
The final Interior bill compromises between earlier House and Senate
proposals at a level of $971 million, 3.7 percent or $35 million more
than this year’s funding level and a similar amount over the request,
after adjusting for the across-the-board cut.
R&D
accounts for nearly two-thirds of the USGS budget, with the remainder
going to non-R&D activities such as environmental data collection,
mapping, and natural hazards reduction. The
final Interior bill provides $555 million for USGS R&D in FY 2006,
an increase of 2.5 percent or $13 million that stays just ahead of the
2.0 percent expected inflation rate (see Table),
in contrast to a proposed cut of 4.8 percent in the request. The final total is slightly above earlier House
and Senate plans. The budget requested particularly steep cuts
in the USGS Geology Division, but the final Interior bill provides increases
for all four USGS divisions. (For
details of the President’s request for Interior R&D, please see
Chapter 13 of AAAS
Report XXX: R&D FY 2006 or the March 2 Interior
R&D Funding Update. For details of House appropriations
for Interior, see the May 12 AAAS R&D Funding
Update. For details of Senate appropriations, see the June
17 AAAS R&D Funding Update.)
Congress reverses sharp proposed cuts to R&D
in the Geologic Hazards, Resources, and Processes Division and provides
a modest 1.5 percent increase to $209 million instead of a proposed
13 percent cut. In February, USGS proposed to cut the $54 million mineral
resources R&D program in half to $25 million in FY 2006, in a repeat
of similar requests in past years. But just as it has in the past two
years, Congress disagrees strongly with the proposal and adds back $30
million in funding in the final Interior bill. Report language accompanying
the bill disagrees strongly with USGS’ rationale that minerals research
could be funded by the private sector, and reaffirms the federal role
in minerals research.
In another earth
sciences-related division, Mapping and Geography R&D increases 12
percent or $4 million to $40 million, but the increase only restores
funding to the 2004 level after a cut in 2005. The ups and downs in
this division are in the land remote sensing programs, which operate
satellites but also fund R&D on data retrieval, archiving, processing,
and imaging.
In water resources R&D, Congress provides a small $1 million increase
in funding to $128 million, in contrast to a requested cut. Again, Congress rejects a perennial USGS proposal
to eliminate the water resources research institutes program and instead
provides $6.5 million, slightly above this year’s funding level. Other
water programs are mostly funded at this year’s levels. Funding
for the Toxic Substances Hydrology Program stays
at $14.6 million; the program is a collaborative effort of USGS scientists,
university and private-sector researchers, and state, local, and other
federal agency scientists to conduct long-term research on water resource
contamination in surface and groundwater environments. There is a slight
increase for the National Water Quality Assessment Program
(NAWQA) to $63 million to bring it back to last year’s funding level.
NAWQA is charged with monitoring the nation’s water quality,
and its data are used by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and
many state regulatory agencies. Similarly, R&D in the Cooperative Water Program stays at last year’s funding level of $64
million after a cut in the 2005 budget. This program supports the collection
of basic hydrologic data, studies of specific water-resources problems,
and hydrologic research through USGS partnerships with state governments
and other entities.
USGS biological
research programs increase by $5 million to $177 million because of
the addition of congressionally earmarked projects.
Other Interior Agencies
Although
USGS is the primary science agency in Interior, four other Interior
bureaus also fund R&D (see Table). These
include funds for minerals and mining research in the Minerals and Management
Service (MMS), wildfire prevention research in the Bureau of Land Management
(BLM), water resources research in the Bureau of Reclamation, and R&D
for the Florida Everglades restoration project in the National Park
Service. Congress goes along with the President’s request for these
programs, including $6 million in BLM for a fire science program.
Impacts of the FY 2006 Interior Budget
The modest FY 2006 increase to Interior R&D marks the sixth year in
a row that Interior R&D funding has just kept pace or lost ground
to inflation (see Figure 1), and leaves the department nearly 25
percent below the funding levels of a decade ago. Interior R&D has
declined sharply since FY 1994, primarily because of the elimination
of the Bureau of Mines in FY 1996 and the merging of the former National
Biological Service into USGS in the mid-1990s. After a large increase
in FY 2000, Interior R&D has been mostly flat since then, resulting
in losses after adjusting for inflation.
Interior support
for research has followed trends in Interior R&D, because nearly
all of Interior’s R&D portfolio is research
with only a small amount for development. A third of Interior’s research
goes to the life sciences, primarily from the BRD. Life sciences research
increased with the creation of the National Biological Service in the
early 1990s, but budget cuts in subsequent years have eroded support.
Two-thirds of Interior research goes to the environmental sciences,
primarily in earth-related fields such as geology. Interior support
for environmental sciences research has declined steadily as the USGS
budget has lost purchasing power. Interior used to be a significant
supporter of engineering research, but this support was almost entirely
eliminated with the closure of the Bureau of Mines.
Figure 1. (click on the image for PDF)
-
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
