Highlights
- The House Appropriations
Committee would provide a small increase of 0.7 percent to R&D in the Department of the Interior for
a total of $619 million, in contrast to requested cut
of nearly 6 percent (see Table).
- The House would reverse proposed cuts to R&D in the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and provide an increase
of $12 million or 2.3 percent to $553 million. The House would restore
$30 million in 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 under
the House proposal.
USGS R&D in FY 2006 House Appropriations
On May 10, the
House Appropriations Committee kicked off the FY 2006 appropriations
process by debating and approving its version of the FY 2006 Interior
and Environment appropriations bill, the first of 12 appropriations
bills. 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). The
House Interior/Environment bill would provide $619 million for Interior
R&D in FY 2006, a slight increase of $4 million or 0.7 percent
above FY 2005 that would be a 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 House Appropriations Committee
allowed itself roughly half a billion dollars more for the $26 billion
Interior and Environment portfolio than the request, and would use some
of the extra dollars to provide $975 million for USGS in FY 2006,
4.1 percent or $38 million more than this year’s funding level and
a similar amount over the request.
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
House bill would allow $553 million for USGS R&D in FY 2006, a small
increase of 2.3 percent or $12 million (see Table), in contrast to a
proposed cut of 4.8 percent in the Administration request. The
budget requested particularly steep cuts in the USGS Geology Division,
but the House would provide increases for the Geology, National Mapping,
and Biological Research divisions and flat funding for the remaining
Water Resources Division. (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).
R&D in the Geologic Hazards, Resources, and Processes
Division would increase $5 million or 2.2 percent to $210 million in
the House plan, in a sharp turnaround from a requested cut of 13 percent.
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, the House disagrees
strongly with the proposal and would add back $30 million in funding.
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 would increase
15 percent or $5 million to $41 million, but this would only restore
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, the House would keep funding flat at $126
million, in contrast to a requested cut. The House would reject the USGS proposal to eliminate the water resources
research institutes program and would instead provide $6.5 million,
slightly above this year’s funding level. Other water programs would
be funded at or slightly below this year’s levels. Funding for
the Toxic Substances Hydrology Program would decline $1 million to $13.4
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 would be 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 would stay even 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.
The House would
provide a small boost to USGS biological research programs to $175 million,
up $3 million from this year and $2 million from the request 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. The House would go
along with the President’s request for these R&D programs.
Impacts of the FY 2006 Interior Budget
The modest House-proposed FY 2006 increase to Interior R&D would be
the sixth year in a row that Interior R&D funding has just kept
pace or lost ground to inflation (see Figure 1), and would leave
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.
The tight fiscal environment in which appropriators are operating for
the FY 2006 appropriations process makes it extremely difficult for
domestic programs to win an increase.
Figure 1. (click
on the image for PDF)
The House Interior/Environment
bill now goes to the full House for expected approval. After that, the Senate
Appropriations Committee is expected to draft its version in June.
- May 12, 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
