Highlights
- The National Science Foundation
(NSF) budget, after declining in 2005, would receive a modest increase
of 3.1 percent to $5.6 billion in the latest House plan, far short of
the $8.5 billion authorized by law.
- The House would add $38
million to the request for NSF’s budget primarily for education programs,
but $18 million less than the request for NSF’s R&D activities.
NSF’s R&D would increase 2.3 percent to $4.2 billion (see Table),
with the House adding to the request for research grants but subtracting
from R&D facilities construction.
- Most NSF research directorates would receive increases between 2 and 3
percent in 2006 (see Table).
- Although the House would add $70
million to the request, most of NSF’s education and training programs
would suffer steep cuts for the second year in a row.
- The Major Research Equipment and
Facilities Construction (MREFC) account would climb from $174 million
to $193 million.
- The small increases for the research directorates would squeeze NSF funding
of competitively awarded research grants. NSF expects to make awards
to just one in five applications this year.
NSF R&D in FY 2006 House Appropriations
On June 7, the House Appropriations
Committee approved its version of the FY 2006 Science, State, Justice,
and Commerce appropriations bill (HR 2682). The House bill would provide
NSF with a total budget of $5.6 billion in FY 2006, $171 million or
3.1 percent above this year’s budget. 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 the FY 2006 House appropriation would
fall almost $3 billion short of the $8.5 billion authorized funding
level for FY 2006. In an extremely tight budget situation, the House
found $38 million more than the request to shore up funding for NSF’s
education programs. (For details of R&D in the FY 2006 request,
please see Chapter 7 of AAAS
Report XXX: R&D FY 2006 or the February
28 AAAS R&D Funding Update.)
Because of an extensive
reorganization of appropriations bill jurisdictions, in FY 2006 the
National Science Foundation (NSF) and NASA
will be funded for the first time with the Departments of Commerce,
State, and Justice. NSF and NASA were formerly funded in the now defunct
VA-HUD appropriations bill alongside the Departments of Veterans Affairs
and Housing and Urban Development. As a result, the former Commerce,
Justice, and State appropriations bill now has “Science” in its name.
The Senate Appropriations Committee, however, has proposed a different
reorganization for its new Commerce, Justice, and Science bill: although
Commerce, Justice, NASA, and NSF will still be funded together in the
Senate, the Senate bill excludes the Department of State. The differing
jurisdictions in the House and the Senate bills will make agreeing on
a final (conference) bill extremely difficult.
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 at a time when the federal budget had just come from four
years of surpluses, but with the return of budget deficits NSF appropriations
have fallen far short of authorized amounts (see Figure 1). The gap widens in the FY 2006 House
appropriation to nearly $3 billion, the distance between the $5.6 billion
appropriation and the $8.5 billion authorized level, putting the NSF doubling
goal well out of reach in these tough budgetary times.
Figure 1. (click
on the image for PDF)
NSF’s R&D funding, which excludes NSF’s education and training activities
and overhead costs, would total $4.2 billion in the House bill, an increase
of $95 million or 2.3 percent that would bring NSF R&D funding roughly
to the 2004 level after cuts in 2005 (see Table).
The House would add 1 percent to
the request for programs in the Research
and Related Activities (R&RA) account, which funds most of NSF’s
R&D. R&RA funding would increase $157
million or 3.7 percent to $4.4 billion, $44 million more than the request.
The House appropriation should allow for increases between 2 and
3 percent for most of NSF’s research directorates, but coming after
budget cuts in 2005 most NSF research programs would be barely
above 2004 funding levels.
The largest increase among the
directorates would be a 13.5 percent boost to Polar Programs. The Polar
increase would fund a proposed transfer of $48 million in non-R&D
Coast Guard costs for icebreakers to the NSF budget. Icebreaker
ships necessary for research access to the Arctic
and Antarctic have traditionally been funded by the Coast Guard, but
in the FY 2006 budget request NSF would take over funding for these
ships. So far, the House Appropriations Committee has agreed to this
transfer in both the Coast Guard and NSF appropriations. Many in the
polar research community are concerned about the financial implications
of this transfer, partly for the extra costs in FY 2006 but mostly because
of the far larger costs looming in the future to renovate or replace
these aging icebreakers within a tight NSF budget. In language accompanying
the bill, the House Appropriations Committees shares these concerns
and instructs NSF to begin formulating long-term alternatives to meeting
icebreaking needs.
The Integrative Activities (IA)
account within R&RA would increase by $6 million to $136 million.
Within the IA account, funding for the Major Research Instrumentation
(MRI) program would stay at $90 million in FY 2006 after falling from
$110 million in 2004. The MRI program awards competitive grants to universities
and colleges to purchase laboratory equipment and instrumentation; in
response to congressional concerns, at least $20 million of the funding
would go toward minority-serving institutions. Also in IA, Science of
Learning Centers is a relatively new program for learning research across
disciplines, with $23 million next year compared to $20 million this
year.
The House would trim the request for Major Research Equipment and Facilities
Construction (MREFC) account, but would still provide a $20 million
boost over the current funding level. The $193 million MREFC appropriation
would be an 11.3 percent increase. The House would agree with the NSF
proposal to have no new starts in FY 2006, and would fund four out of
the five existing projects. While the House would provide funding close
to the request for the Scientific Ocean Drilling Vessel, the Atacama
Large Millimeter Array, EarthScope, and the
IceCube Neutrino Observatory projects, the House would not
fund the Rare Symmetry Violating Processes (RSVP) project.
The House would try to restore
funding to steep proposed cuts in NSF’s education programs. NSF
proposed an Education and Human
Resources (EHR) budget of just $737 million, down a dramatic $104
million from this year after an identical cut in the 2005 budget. The
House would add back $70 million for a budget of $807 million, which
would still be 4.1 percent below FY 2005. The House would leave in place
a 24 percent proposed cut from NSF’s contribution to the Math
and Science Partnerships (MSP) program, but would provide $175 million
for Elementary, Secondary and Informal Education, $34 million more than
the request and $7 million less than this year. The bill would also
turn a proposed 43 percent cut in Research, Evaluation and Communication
programs into a more modest but still significant 17 percent cut to
$50 million. The House would also provide $150 million for Undergraduate
Education, less than the $154 million current funding level but a big
improvement over a requested cut down to $135 million. The FY 2006 House
appropriation contains $97 million for the Experimental Program to Stimulate
Competitive Research (EPSCoR), up slightly
from this 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.
NSF Funding Mechanisms
The small increases for the research directorates in the House appropriation
would squeeze NSF funding of competitively awarded research grants.
The success rate for NSF research grant applications would be
21 percent in FY 2006 in the request, essentially unchanged from
2005 and 2004. The modest 1 percent boost over the request in the House
appropriation would do little to alter this projection. ENG expects
to fund only 18 percent of its research grant applications, while CISE
would fund 16 percent; both directorates’ success rates would be up
from just 15 percent last year and this year.
Next Steps and Possible Impacts
NSF has enjoyed mostly steady
budget growth over the past several decades, as shown in Figure 2, but in
recent times NSF’s budget has stagnated and even declined. 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 budget over five years,
culminating in the NSF authorization bill of December 2002. But when the budget
surplus years of 1998-2001 were followed by the current string of budget
deficits, budget growth slowed down to just ahead of the inflation rate in FY
2004 and reversed with FY 2005 budget cuts. The FY 2006 House appropriation
would keep NSF R&D just ahead of inflation but would fail to recover the
lost ground from last year’s budget cuts. As noted earlier, these smaller
increases or cuts in recent years have 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 will in the
House to approve a budget more consistent with the authorized funding track, in
drafting the House NSF appropriation lawmakers were again stymied by self-imposed
tight restraints on overall domestic discretionary spending they approved
earlier in the year.
Figure 2. (click
on the image for PDF)
The House is expected to debate
and approve the Science, State, Justice, and Commerce appropriations bill the
week of June 13. The Senate Appropriations Committee is expected to draft its
version later this month.
-
June 14, 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
