Highlights
- A House committee has proposed to cut the National Science Foundation
(NSF) budget next year. The House would award NSF a budget of $5.5
billion in FY 2005, $278 million less than the request and $111 million
or 2.0 percent below the current year (see Table).
Most research directorates would
see their budgets decline.
- The NSF budget
of $5.5 billion would be far short of the $7.4 billion FY 2005 authorization
signed into law 19 months ago as part of a plan to double the NSF budget
in the five years to FY 2007.
- NSF’s R&D funding would total $4.0 billion in FY 2005, a cut of 0.9
percent (see Table).
- Major Research
Equipment and Facilities Construction (MREFC) would be the only account
to enjoy a sizeable increase, going from $155 million to $208 million
for five large projects.
- The House would move funding for the Math and Science Partnerships back to its traditional home in Education
and Human Resources (E.H.R) instead of the NSF proposal to move it to
the Research and Related Activities (R&RA) account, but would cut
its funding from $140 million down to $82.5 million.
- The House cuts to the research directorates would cut deeply into NSF
funding of competitively awarded research grants. The total number
of NSF research grants would fall, and the competition for them would
get more difficult. NSF already expects to make awards to less than
one in four applications this year, and the House appropriation would
result in even tougher odds.
NSF R&D in FY 2005 House Appropriations
On July
22, the House Appropriations Committee drafted its version of an FY
2005 VA/HUD appropriations bill that would cut funding for the National
Science Foundation (NSF) in FY 2005. The House bill would provide NSF
with a total budget of $5.5 billion in FY 2005, $111 million or 2.0
percent below FY 2004. An NSF authorization bill calling for a doubling
of the NSF budget between FY 2002 and FY 2007 was signed into law in
December 2003, but the FY 2005 House appropriation would fall almost
$2 billion short of the $7.4 billion authorized funding level for FY
2005. The House appropriation would also be the first cut in the NSF
budget in nearly a decade. (For
details of R&D in the FY 2005 request, please see Chapter
7 of AAAS Report XXIX: R&D
FY 2005 or the February
26 AAAS R&D Funding Update.)
The House FY
2005 VA-HUD bill would provide $93 billion for discretionary programs,
almost $1 billion more than the President’s request and $2 billion more
than this year’s funding level. The bill funds science agencies including
NSF, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration
(NASA), the Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA), and non-R&D programs for veterans and housing. Although
the overall bill total would increase, the House would devote all the
additional funds and then some to veterans and housing programs, complaining
that the Administration request significantly underfunds these needs.
The House is constrained from adding even more funds to the VA-HUD bill
because both the House and Senate are working with a total of $822 billion
for all discretionary programs in FY 2005 that is $1 billion lower than
the President’s request, necessitating difficult choices in funding
priorities.
An NSF authorization
bill calling for a doubling of the NSF budget between FY 2002 and FY
2007 was signed into law in December 2002, but this year’s NSF budget
falls $1 billion short of the authorized $6.6 billion funding level
for FY 2004. The gap widens in the FY 2005 request to $1.6 billion, the distance between
the $5.7 billion request and the $7.4 billion authorized level. Now
the House would widen the gap to $1.9 billion, putting the NSF doubling
goal well out of reach in these tough budgetary times.
NSF’s R&D funding, which excludes NSF’s education and training activities
and overhead costs, would total $4.0 billion in the House bill, a cut
of 0.9 percent or $39 million (see Table).
The House
would impose cuts on the Research
and Related Activities (R&RA) account, which funds most of NSF’s
R&D. R&RA funding would fall $100 million or 2.3 percent down
to $4.2 billion, $221 million short of the modest requested increase.
The budgets of the research directorates
would fall between 2 and 3 percent, except for Social, Behavioral,
and Economic (SBE) Sciences with a 5.3 percent increase and Polar Programs,
which would increase the requested 2.2 percent (see Table).
The Integrative
Activities (IA) account within R&RA would fall $26 million to $118
million. The House would reject the Administration
proposal to transfer the Math
and Science Partnerships from Education and Human Resources (E.H.R)
to IA. The House would keep the Partnerships in E.H.R. at a level
of $82.5 million, down substantially from $139 million this year but
$2.5 million more than the request. The MSP program, run jointly by
NSF and the Department of Education, encourages academic institutions
and schools to work together to improve math and science education.
The House would agree with the Bush Administration’s desire to shift
the emphasis of the program toward ED, even as it keeps the NSF share
in E.H.R. The FY 2005 budget requested $269 million for the $150 million fthe Department
of Education’s (ED) share of the program, up dramatically from $149
million this year; the House would go along with the ED request. Combined,
the MSP programs would receive $351.5 million in FY 2005 from the House,
up from $288 million this year, Elsewhere in the IA account, the House
would agree to a requested cut in the Major Research Instrumentation
(MRI) from $109 million down to $90 million. The MRI program awards
competitive grants to universities and colleges to purchase scientific
and engineering equipment and instrumentation to be used for research
and training. To find savings within a tight budget, the House would
not provide the requested $30 million in start-up funds in IA for a
new group of Science and Technology Centers, nor the requested $5 million
for a new Innovation Fund.
NSF’s Education and Human Resources (EHR) programs would receive $843 million,
down more than 10 percent from this year. Most of the decline is due
to the shift in Math and Science
Partnerships (MSP) funding to the Department of Education. The FY
2005 House appropriation contains $94 million for the Experimental Program
to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR), the same level as year.
EPSCOR assists research institutions and states that have traditionally
been underrepresented in federal R&D funding to build research capacity.
The program is currently open to 24 states, Puerto Rico, and the U.S.
Virgin Islands.
The one bright spot in the House bill would be NSF’s support of R&D
facilities. There would be $208 million for the Major Research Equipment and Facilities Construction (MREFC) account,
up dramatically from $155 million this year. The House would agree to
two of the three proposed starts (the Scientific Ocean Drilling Vessel
and Rare Symmetry Violating Processes (RSVP)), with the other proposed
start (the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON)) a casualty
of tight budget constraints. The House bill would keep planning and
design for NEON alive in the R&RA account at $6 million in anticipation
of future MREFC funding. The House would boost funding for the IceCube
Neutrino Detector Observatory from $42 million this year to $51 million
in FY 2005 in order to accelerate the timetable for this project at
the South Pole.
NSF Funding Mechanisms
The House-proposed cuts to the research directorates would seriously squeeze
NSF funding of competitively awarded research grants. Even with the requested increase for NSF proposed
by the Bush Administration in February, NSF estimated that the success
rate for research grant applications would dip to 23 percent in
FY 2005, down one percentage point from the past few years. Among some
directorates, the odds of success would be even lower. The Engineering
directorate (ENG) expected to fund only 15 percent of its research grant
applications, while Biological Sciences (BIO) would fund less than one
in five (19 percent), both down one percentage point from this year.
The House appropriation, if it becomes final, would almost certainly
lead to far lower success rates.
Although the number
of research grants awarded has been on a steady upward trend in recent
years, NSF expected in its request to fund only 6,145
research grants in FY 2005, down by 72 from this year’s expected total;
NSF research grants could dip below 6,000 if the House appropriation
prevails. Even with the requested increase, BIO and ENG expected
large declines, and Mathematical and Physical Sciences (MPS) a small
decline. The House appropriation would also jeopardize NSF plans to
increase the average duration of a research grant from 2.9 years to
3.0 years.
Figure 1. (click
on the image to view or download a color, full-size PDF version of the
chart)
Outlook and Historical Trends
NSF has enjoyed mostly steady budget growth over the past
15 years, as shown in Figure 1. After declines in the mid-1990s in the
push toward a balanced budget, growth resumed after FY 1998 and momentum
began to build to double the NSF budget over five years, culminating
in the NSF authorization bill of December 2002. But NSF budget growth
slowed down to just ahead of the inflation rate in FY 2004, and would
slow down further in the FY 2005 request and reverse in the House plan.
As noted earlier, these smaller increases put the NSF budget further
and further behind the authorized doubling path and have created downward
pressures on NSF grant sizes and success rates. While there is strong
political pressure for Congress to approve a budget more consistent
with the authorized funding track, lawmakers have been stymied by tight
restraints on overall domestic discretionary spending. In FY 2005, with
overall domestic spending proposed to increase by just 0.5 percent,
the restraints are even tighter.
The House-proposed cuts for next year could be a taste of further cuts
in the future. With Congress and the President apparently committed
to reducing the budget deficit in half within the next five years primarily
through holding down domestic spending, the consequences for NSF are
becoming clearer. The FY 2005 budget contains preliminary projections
for the NSF budget out to FY 2009. By
FY 2009, the NSF budget would be $5.7
billion, still below the FY 2005 budget. After
adjusting for expected inflation, the five-year Bush budget would leave
NSF’s R&D investments 4.7 percent below
this year’s funding level in 2009. The
House VA-HUD bill would take NSF well below even these budget projections.
(For more on the five-year projections for federal R&D, see
the April 22 (revised May 7) AAAS Analysis of
the Outyear Projections for R&D in the FY 2005 Budget.)
Next Steps
The House VA-HUD
bill’s proposed cuts to NSF, NASA, and EPA look so steep, especially
in an election year, that the bill may be rejected by the full House.
If that looks likely, the House leadership may prevent the bill from
reaching the House floor in September. The Senate, facing the same fiscal
constraints, may not draft its VA-HUD bill at all. Thus, the bill is
almost certain to be included in a year-end omnibus appropriations bill.
There is already talk that funding for NSF and NASA will have to be
boosted through the infusion of additional funds in a year-end budget
deal. Where the additional funding might come from, however, is uncertain,
and it is possible that these House-proposed funding levels could eventually
prevail in the final FY 2005 appropriations package.
(This analysis is one of a series
of AAAS R&D Funding Updates on the FY 2005 congressional appropriations
process. This analysis includes information on R&D in House appropriations
for the National Science Foundation. 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.)
- July 26, 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
