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NSF R&D by Program in FY 2007 Senate Appropriations PDF
version of this document Main
R&D in the FY 2007 Budget Page
Supplemental
Materials: "House OKs Competitiveness
Initiative Boost for NSF R&D," AAAS R&D Funding Update on R&D
in FY 2007 House Appropriations "Large
Boost to NSF Proposed for 2007," AAAS R&D Funding Update on R&D
in the FY 2007 NSF Budget AAAS Analysis
of R&D in the FY 2007 Budget -
| Highlights -
The Bush Administration’s American Competitiveness Initiative to boost physical
sciences research with an 8 percent increase for the National Science Foundation
(NSF) budget came another step closer to reality after the Senate joined the House
and the Administration in endorsing it. The Senate’s $6.0 billion NSF appropriation
for 2007 matches earlier House and request proposals (see Table).
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NSF R&D funding (excluding education, training, and overhead costs) would
increase 7.9 percent to $4.5 billion in the Senate plan after several years of
flat funding, to reach an all-time high in real terms. -
Most research directorates would receive increases between 5 and 8 percent after
several years of flat or declining funding. All the research directorates would
increase average award sizes, numbers of research grants, and success rates for
research grant applications. -
The Senate would shift some funds from research to give NSF’s Education and Human
Resources (E.H.R.) budget a 4.8 percent boost to $836 million in 2007, $20 million
more than the request but well below previous years’ budgets.
NSF R&D in FY 2007 Senate Appropriations On
July 13, the Senate Appropriations Committee approved its version of the FY 2007
Commerce, Justice, and Science appropriations bill (CJS; HR 5672). On June 29,
the full House approved its version of the similar Science, State, Justice, and
Commerce appropriations bill (SSJC; HR 5672). The bill is a major funding source
for federal R&D, combining funding for the National Science Foundation (NSF),
the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA),
and the Department of Commerce.
The Senate would
join the House in fully endorsing proposed increases for NSF as part of the American
Competitiveness Initiative, bringing the increase another step closer to reality.
The Senate CJS bill would provide $6.0 billion for NSF’s FY 2007 budget, almost
the same as the request and 7.4 percent more than this year (see Table).
Both NSF and Commerce are key parts of the President’s proposed “American Competitiveness
Initiative” (ACI) that was first previewed in his State of the Union address in
response to a growing wave of concern about the state of U.S.
innovation. The ACI proposes to double funding for three key physical sciences
agencies over the next decade, and the 2007 budget requests the first installment
of this ambitious plan. NSF and Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and
Technology (NIST) laboratories, both funded in the CJS bill, are two of the three
favored agencies (the other is DOE’s Office of Science).
The House and the Senate have both drafted appropriations that agree to the proposed
increases for all three ACI agencies, making eventual approval of these increases
almost certain. (For details of NSF R&D in the request,
see Chapter 7 of AAAS Report
XXXI: R&D FY 2007 or the Feb.
23 R&D Funding Update. For details of House NSF appropriations, see the
June 23 R&D Funding Update.) The
requested and congressional increases would go not only to NSF’s investment in
the physical sciences but across the entire NSF research portfolio, which spans
the entire range of science and engineering disciplines. NSF is the third-largest
federal sponsor of physical sciences research, after DOE and NASA, but is among
the top 3 federal funding agencies for nearly every science and engineering discipline.
NSF is the second largest funding source for R&D at colleges and universities
behind only the NIH, and provides the majority of federal support for basic research
at colleges and universities in the social sciences, environmental sciences, non-medical
biology, mathematics, and computer sciences. For the physical sciences and engineering,
NSF funds more than 40 percent of all federally supported academic basic research.
Most of its funding is in the form of competitively awarded research grants or
competitively awarded research centers. NSF’s R&D funding, which excludes NSF’s education and training activities
and overhead costs (such as polar logistics and administrative salaries), would
total $4.5 billion in the Senate plan, slightly off the request but a gain of
$331 million or 7.9 percent that would bring the R&D total slightly above
2004 levels in inflation-adjusted terms to a new high (see Figure 1), after cuts
in 2005 and 2006. 
Figure
1. (click on the image for PDF) NSF’s
main Research and Related Activities (R&RA) account, which funds nearly
all of NSF’s basic and applied research and contains NSF’s discipline-based research
directorates, would climb 7.3 percent to $4.6 billion in the Senate appropriation
(see Table). Most research directorates would receive
increases between 5 and 8 percent after several years of flat or declining funding
(see Figure 2). There would be larger increases for some key programs: the new
Office of Cyberinfrastructure (OCI), a recent spin-off
from the Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) directorate,
would see its funding climb 43 percent to $182 million. OCI supports the procurement,
development, and operation of state-of-the-art cyberinfrastructure
resources for the entire research community. The increase would go toward making
a petascale high-performance computing system available,
and toward new software and collaborative tools needed for researchers to take
advantage of high-performance computing. The Office of Polar Programs (OPP), which
funds polar research but also provides logistical support for research activities
at both poles and maintains the South Pole Station, would receive $436 million,
a boost of 12.1 percent. The OPP increase would go to ramp up research during
the International Polar Year (2007-2008) and for increased logistics costs to
support that research. OPP would also continue to fund icebreaker ships necessary
for research access to the Arctic and Antarctic; these had traditionally been
funded by the Coast Guard, but in 2006 NSF takes over funding and would pay the
Coast Guard $57 million (down $1 million) in 2007 while NSF contemplates how it
can meet its future icebreaking needs.  Figure
2. (click on the image for PDF) Even
after the substantial 2007 increases, funding for several research directorates
would remain below 2004 levels in real terms because of budget cuts in 2005
and 2006 (see Figure 2). In real terms, funding for the Mathematical and Physical
Sciences (MPS), Geosciences (GEO), and the Biological Sciences (BIO) directorates
would remain below 2004 funding levels even if the 2007 Senate increases become
final, while the CISE; Polar; Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences (SBE);
and Engineering (ENG) directorates would reach new highs. The
Major Research Equipment and Facilities Construction (MREFC) account would receive
a 24 percent or $46 million boost to $237 million in 2007. MREFC funds only the
construction of large scientific facilities; smaller facilities construction projects,
planning and design for future facilities, research instrumentation grants, and
facilities operations are funded in R&RA by the research directorates. From
funding just 4 projects in 2006, the MREFC increase would allow funding for 8
projects, two of them new starts. Construction of the Atacama
Large Millimeter Array (ALMA; an astronomy project), EarthScope
(earth sciences), IceCube (a neutrino observatory at
the South Pole), and the Scientific Ocean Drilling Vessel (SODV, for ocean research)
would continue in FY 2007, while the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON),
a long-delayed ecological research project, would finally receive construction
funding in FY 2007 and the South Pole Station Modernization (SPSM) project would
resume in 2007 after a funding pause. The two new starts would be the Alaska Region
Research Vessel, $56 million to replace an arctic research vessel, and the Ocean
Observatories Initiative, $14 million for an integrated ocean observing network.
The House and
now the Senate would add to a modest requested increase for NSF education and
human resources programs, but funding would still remain 18 percent below 2004
levels in real terms. NSF proposed an Education
and Human Resources (EHR) budget of $816 million, but the Senate would add
$20 million for a total of $836 million, a 4.9 percent increase over this year.
But since the EHR budget was $945 million as recently as 2004, the 2007 increase
would do little to reverse steep cuts in the past two years (see Figure 2). Much
of the fall is due to a shift in the Math and Science Partnerships (MSP) program
from a joint Department of Education (ED)-NSF program to a mostly Education-only
one. The NSF contribution was $139 million in 2004 but has declined steadily since
then and would decline further to just $46 million in the 2007 Senate appropriation,
while the ED program is now $182 million and would rise to $195 million in the
Senate Labor-HHS appropriations bill. The bulk of the additional Senate dollars
would go to the $110 million Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research
(EPSCoR), up from $100 million. 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 25
states, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. NSF Funding Mechanisms The large Senate and House-endorsed increases for the research directorates
would begin to reverse recent declines in competitively awarded research grants.
Looking only at competitively awarded
research grants, NSF’s core funding mechanism, NSF expects to fund 6,760 research
grants next year, a 9 percent increase over 2006, while at the same time increasing
the average award size to $148,300 (up 3.7 percent) after several years of flat
funding. After several years of declining success rates, NSF projects that it
will fund 21 percent of research grant proposals, up slightly from 20 percent
the last two years. Possible Impacts NSF
is the only federal agency with responsibility for research in all major science
and engineering fields. NSF has historically had a balanced
research portfolio covering the breadth of science and engineering. In most
fields, NSF is the largest or second-largest source of federal funding. In the
past, NSF has distributed its budget increases unevenly depending on then-current
research priorities. In particular, NSF support for computer sciences research
has increased dramatically over the past decade, as fundamental IT research has
grown as a national priority. NSF support of engineering research has also grown
substantially over the last decade, boosted even more in recent years with growth
in nanotechnology support. But the recent stagnation in NSF funding has resulted
in flat or falling support for all disciplines. If the FY 2007 Senate, House,
and requested increases prevail, however, these trends could begin to turn around.
Outlook and Next
Steps The
House has approved its Science-State-Justice-Commerce appropriations bill, but
the Senate may not take up its CJS bill until September or later. A final, compromise
appropriation may not be ready until after the November elections, although when
it does appear it is likely to contain the full ACI-driven increase for NSF. (This analysis is one of a series
of AAAS R&D Funding Updates on FY 2007 congressional appropriations. The complete
series of AAAS R&D Funding Updates, including continually updated analyses
of R&D in FY 2007 appropriations, is available on the AAAS
R&D Web Site (http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd)
in the “FY 2007 R&D” or the “What’s
New” sections.)-
July 25, 2006
AAAS R&D Budget and Policy Program
1200 New York Avenue,
NW
Washington, DC 20005
(202) 326-6607
AAAS R&D Web site: http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd
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