(This analysis is an update on progress
of the FY 2009 budget through Congress, and also an update of 2008 and 2009 appropriations.
This analysis updates the recently released AAAS Report
XXXIII: Research and Development FY 2009, a comprehensive look at the
President's budget for R&D in FY 2009, and is revised from an earlier May
21 analysis. More tables and continually updated supplemental materials on
R&D in the FY 2008 budget can be found on the AAAS R&D Web site at http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd.)
Highlights
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Congress is ready to finalize an additional $2.4 billion for Department of
Defense (DOD) weapons development in 2008 and 2009 as part of a war-related supplemental
bill, and also $338 million in domestic science funding for the current year.
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Congress is gearing up for the FY 2009 appropriations season. Armed with a budget
resolution adding $21 billion to the President’s request for 2009 appropriations
for a total of $1.01 trillion, congressional appropriators have begun drafting
program-by-program funding levels in 12 appropriations bills.
R&D in the FY 2008 Supplemental Appropriations Bill
This
week, the Senate is scheduled to debate and likely give final approval to a $187
billion 2008 and 2009 supplemental appropriations bill, primarily to pay for ongoing
war costs. After the House and Senate approved separate versions of the bill in
May, last week the House revised its version of the bill and approved it once
more with the expectation that the Senate will approve it intact this week, sending
the bill to the President for his expected signature.
Although
supplementals normally pay for emergencies and other
short-term expenses, there is considerable R&D funding in the latest supplemental
bill for both the current year and next year. The bill would give the Department
of Defense (DOD) $2.4 billion in R&D funding in FY 2008 and 2009, almost
entirely for development funding with a small portion for research. The bill would
also give domestic science programs $338 million in 2008 funding, down from $900
million in an earlier Senate bill but up from nothing in an earlier House bill.
Most of this money would go to R&D activities. The bill would give the
National Institutes of Health (NIH) $150 million, and $62.5 million each to the
Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science, the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration (NASA), and the National Science Foundation (NSF).
The
inclusion of $338 million in domestic science funding represents a partial payoff
on long months of campaigning by the biomedical and physical sciences communities.
NIH would receive $150 million in the Office of the Director (OD), which would
then distribute the funds to all the NIH institutes proportional to the institutes’
2008 allocations. DOE’s Office of Science would receive
$62.5 million. Some of the money could go to Fusion so that the U.S.
could rejoin the multi-national International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor
(ITER) fusion project; December’s 2008 omnibus appropriations bill had originally
zeroed out the U.S.
contribution for 2008. But most of the Science resources are likely go to High Energy Physics to reverse some of the abrupt program
cuts, project terminations, and national lab layoffs that resulted from the 2008
omnibus bill’s funding cuts. NSF’s Research and Related Activities (R&RA)
account would receive $22.5 million, to be distributed among all the research
directorates to help boost current-year funding of research grants. NSF’s Education
and Human Resources (EHR) programs would receive $40 million to supplement 2008
funding that fell short of authorized levels in the Robert Noyce Scholarship program, Graduate Research Fellowships,
Graduate Teaching Fellowships, and the Federal Scholarship for Service. NASA would
receive $62.5 million to replenish science accounts that have been drained over
the past several years to help pay for return to flight of the Space Shuttle after
the Columbia disaster. In addition
to the science funding above, DOE would also receive $62.5 million for environmental
cleanup activities, while the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) would receive
$150 million for its salaries and expenses.
Most
of the defense R&D supplemental funds are part of the Pentagon’s and Bush
Administration’s supplemental requests for 2008 and 2009. The latest supplemental
bill would give DOD’s RDT&E programs $1.7 billion in 2008 R&D funding
($163 million, Army; $366 million, Navy; $400 million, Air Force; $817 million,
Defense Wide) almost entirely for development (“6.3” and higher) activities plus
$365 million in 2008 applied research funding within Defense Health Programs for
battle casualty and psychological health research, traumatic brain injury research,
regenerative medicine, and disability evaluation research. The bill would also
give DOD $388 million for 2009 classified development funding ($113 million, Army;
$72 million, Navy; $203 million, Defense Wide), nearly identical to the Pentagon
request. All of these figures would be reduced by 2.16% because of an across-the-board
reduction inserted by the House last week, but the supplemental would still bring
total DOD R&D funding in 2008 close to $80 billion, a new record.
Although
President Bush threatened to veto earlier versions of the bill for exceeding his
requested levels and for adding billions of dollars in domestic spending, the
Administration has indicated its willingness to sign this latest version of the
supplemental into law. If the Senate approves this latest House-approved version
unchanged, then the bill will go to the President for his signature; if the Senate
amends the bill again, then it will have to go back and forth between the two
chambers until an identical version passes both the House and the Senate.
R&D
in FY 2009 Appropriations
On
June 5, the Congress reached final agreement on an FY 2009 budget resolution (S.
Con. Res. 70), which allowed the House and Senate Appropriations Committees to
begin work on FY 2009 appropriations. The budget resolution is an annual congressional
document that represents the congressional response to the President’s February
budget request, and provides a big-picture budget framework for all later congressional
budget decisions. For the federal R&D investment, nearly all of which is allocated
through appropriations for discretionary spending, the budget resolution sets
a total amount for all discretionary appropriations; working from that total,
the Appropriations Committees spend the rest of the year dividing up that total
among the 12 annual appropriations bills, and further dividing those totals into
program-by-program funding levels for federal R&D and other discretionary
programs.
The FY
2009 budget resolution allocates $1,013 billion for regular (non-emergency) FY
2009 appropriations, $21 billion more than the President’s request (see Table).
The budget assumes roughly the requested amount for defense discretionary programs,
so the additional $21 billion would go to shore up funding for nondefense
programs. The additional money would allow nondefense
programs overall to increase slightly ahead of inflation, instead of declining
as in the President’s request. Considering that historically federal R&D investments
have been roughly 1 out of every 7 discretionary dollars, the budget resolution
could mean $3 billion or so more than the request for federal R&D programs
on the domestic side.
The
additional $21 billion could go a long way toward turning some requested cuts
into flat funding or increases. For the R&D investment, as reported in AAAS
Report XXXIII: R&D FY 2009, the comprehensive analysis of the FY 2009
R&D request, the budget request proposes large increases for three signature
Bush Administration priorities: research funding in the three physical sciences
agencies of the American Competitiveness Initiative (ACI; NSF, DOE Office of Science,
and the NIST laboratories), development funding in NASA for new human spacecraft,
and development funding for new weapons systems in DOD. But within the overall
declining nondefense budget, many other R&D programs
would see their funding remain flat or fall in FY 2009, including most agricultural
and environmental research programs, NIH biomedical research, and even non-priority
funding within priority agencies such as NASA’s research portfolio and NIST’s
extramural programs. The budget resolution’s $1.0 trillion total could allow appropriators
to sustain requested increases for ACI and other programs, but also boost funding
for NIH and other agencies.
Unfortunately,
this scenario is exactly the same scenario as last year’s 2008 process, when Congress
went into the 2008 appropriations season with $21 billion more than the President
and proceeded to write 2008 appropriations bills shoring up funding for domestic
programs proposed for steep cuts in the request while sustaining large R&D
increases in the ACI agencies. But after actual and threatened presidential vetoes
for appropriations bills that exceeded his request, Congress eventually gave up
the extra $21 billion and produced a December 2008 omnibus appropriations bill
that stuck to the President’s total and trimmed the ACI increases in order to
increase funding for other areas. President Bush has once again threatened to
veto any 2009 appropriations bills that exceed his request, so the conditions
are ripe for another appropriations stalemate in the fall, with the only change
a Congress already signaling its willingness to wait until a new President takes
office in January to finalize 2009 appropriations, in the hope that he will be
more willing to accept the additional $21 billion in domestic appropriations than
President Bush.
Appropriations
Subcommittees: More for Science Programs Possible
Last
week, both the House and Senate Appropriations Committees released draft “302(b)”
allocations, an initial division of the $1,013 billion total for all 2009 discretionary
spending among the 12 appropriations bills (see Table).
At this point, the House and Senate allocations are different, although eventually
they will be the same. These allocations give a preliminary indication of how
Congress would like to allocate the additional $21 billion it has given appropriators.
Below are a short summary of selected appropriations bills and an analysis of
the potential impacts of the new allocations.
Commerce,
Justice, Science (CJS) – The CJS bill funds NSF, NASA, and the Department
of Commerce, among other programs. Both the House and the Senate would add billions
to the Administration’s $53.7 billion request for programs in this bill, the House
$3.2 billion and the Senate $4.2 billion. The extra funding should be more than
enough to provide the full ACI increase for NSF, with room to give NASA a boost
above the request and to give boosts to Commerce R&D programs in the National
Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration (NOAA). Acting on its allocation, the Senate Appropriations Committee
last week approved a CJS bill that would match the NSF request of $6.9 billion,
add $200 million to NASA’s request and restore funding for two NIST programs proposed
for elimination.
Defense
– Although the Defense bill, which funds most of DOD, would receive $4 billion
less than what DOD requested in both the House and Senate allocations, in similar
circumstances Congress has added billions of dollars every year to DOD R&D
on top of the request, primarily through the addition of performer-specific earmarks.
One item of interest is whether Congress will agree to DOD’s 4 percent requested
increase in its “6.1” (basic research) portfolio, a 16 percent increase if 2008
earmarks are excluded.
Energy-Water
– This bill funds DOE as well as the Corps of Engineers. Both the House and the
Senate assume $33.3 billion in 2009 funding for programs in this bill, $1.9 billion
more than the request. The allocations should be more than enough to provide the
full 19 percent requested increase for the DOE Office of Science, with room for
additional funding for DOE’s applied energy R&D
programs.
Labor-HHS-Education
– This bill funds the Departments of Labor, Education, and Health and Human Services.
Both the House and Senate would allocate roughly $153 billion for programs in
this bill, $7 to $8 billion more than the President’s request. The allocations
give appropriators ample room to turn a flat NIH request into an increase while
adding funds to steep requested cuts in other health programs.
These
additional allocations depend, of course, on the President’s willingness to sign
appropriations bills containing these additional funds into law.
Next Steps and Possible Impacts
The
Appropriations Committees have begun drafting and approving appropriations bills
in hopes of sending most of them to the House and Senate floors by the end of
July, but none, or at most one or two, of the 12 2009 appropriations bills will
be signed into law by the October 1 start of FY 2009. It is increasingly likely
that the 2009 appropriations process will drag on into calendar year 2009 and
the next presidential administration. A continually updated table on the current
status of FY 2009 appropriations is now available on the AAAS R&D web site,
and AAAS R&D Funding Updates on House and Senate R&D appropriations for
the major R&D funding agencies are also available at each stage of the FY
2009 appropriations process.
(More materials on R&D in the FY 2009 budget,
historical data and charts, and more information on AAAS Report XXXIII: Research and Development FY
2009, can be found on the AAAS R&D Web site at http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd.)
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June 23, 2008
AAAS R&D Budget and Policy Program
1200 New York Avenue,
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Washington, DC 20005
(202) 326-6607
AAAS R&D Web site: http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd
