In a time of great uncertainty, with imminent military
action against Iraq, a shaky U.S. economy, the return of budget deficits,
the loss of the space shuttle and seven astronauts, and a federal budget
for fiscal year (FY) 2003 that was still unfinished at that time, President
Bush's FY 2004 budget proposal calls for overall increases for the federal
investment in R&D, especially for the priorities of defense development
and homeland security R&D, with a mixture of flat funding, cuts, and
at-best modest increases for other R&D programs. In a budget that
proposes record deficits in the coming years, an additional $1.5 trillion
package of tax cuts over the next decade, and continuing increases in
defense and entitlement spending, the proposal calls for only modest increases
in domestic programs not related to homeland security, with the consequences
of reduced expectations for many R&D programs.
• The request for total federal R&D in FY 2004 is another
record at $122.5 billion, or 4.4 percent more than FY 2003 (see Table
II-1). Most of the increase would go to defense development of weapons
systems, leaving smaller percentage increases for other categories of
spending (see Table II-1 and Chapters
1 and 2).
• Two agencies may have to adjust to diminished expectations after
years of favored treatment. After an almost-completed five-year doubling
campaign involving 15 percent increases for each of the past five years,
growth in the National Institutes of Health (NIH) budget would slow
to just 2.7 percent in FY 2004 (see Chapter 8).
Although President Bush signed a National Science Foundation (NSF) authorization
bill in December that called for its budget to double over five years,
the NSF total budget request of $5.5 billion in FY 2004 would fall far
short of the $6.4 billion authorized level (see Chapter
10).
• The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), officially created
just this year, would become a major R&D funding source with an
R&D budget of $1.0 billion, a dramatic increase of 49.6 percent
from the estimated FY 2003 level for comparable programs (see Table
II-20 and Chapter 12).
• Nondefense R&D would increase by just 1.2 percent to $55.0
billion. Excluding the modest growth in the NIH budget, however, nondefense
R&D excluding NIH would fall by 0.1 percent to $28.0 billion (see
Table II-1 and Chapter
3).
• Outside of DOD and DHS, the federal R&D portfolio is a mix
of flat funding and cuts from last year, with some modest increases
(see agency chapters).
• Defense R&D would total 55 percent of the federal R&D
portfolio in FY 2004 at $67.5 billion, up 7.2 percent from the FY 2003
level, from near-parity with nondefense a few years ago (see Table
I-4). Department of Defense (DOD) R&D would surpass Cold War
funding levels at $62.8 billion (up 7.2 percent), with the entire increase
for the development costs of new weapons and missile defense systems;
DOD basic and applied research would both decline (see
Table II-2 and Chapter 6). Department of
Energy (DOE) defense R&D would rise 8.6 percent to $4.2 billion
(see Table II-11 and Chapter
9). The new DHS would also fund defense-related R&D (see Chapter
12).
• The federal investment in research (basic and applied) would
grow by just 1.5 percent to $53.7 billion, reflecting greater emphasis
on defense development (see Table II-1 and
Chapter 3). Excluding a 7.0 percent increase
for NIH research, total research excluding NIH would fall 3.4 percent
to $26.9 billion.
• The AAAS analysis of the outyear projections in the FY 2004
budget shows that total R&D would increase to $134.4 billion in
FY 2008 under Bush Administration long-term budget plans, a 4.7 percent
gain after adjusting for expected inflation (see Table
I-8 and Chapter 3).
• Nanotechnology (see Chapter 25) and
information technology R&D (see Chapter 24)
would be high priorities in the federal R&D portfolio among multi-agency
initiatives agencies (see Table I-10). But
the ongoing Climate Change Science Program would see a new organizational
structure but flat funding (see Chapter 16).
