(This analysis is a progress
report on FY 2006 House and Senate appropriations so far in the budget
process. The complete series of AAAS R&D Funding Updates, including
continually updated analyses of R&D by agency 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.)
In appropriations actions
before a week-long Fourth of July recess, Congress put its own stamp
on federal R&D priorities by adding to the Bush Administration’s
requested cuts for Department of Defense (DOD) research and Department
of Energy (DOE) Office of Science funding next year, but would mostly
stick to the President’s request of flat or declining funding for most
other federal R&D programs after adjusting for expected inflation.
The House of Representatives
has drafted fiscal year (FY) 2006 budget bills that would provide a
record $135.0 billion for the federal R&D portfolio next year, an
increase of $2.4 billion or 1.8 percent over this year that would be
$2.8 billion more than the request (see Table
1). Within the total, the federal research portfolio (basic and
applied) would be $56.7 billion, a 1.4 percent or $780 million increase
that would be $1.5 billion more than the request (see Table
2). In both cases, more than 90 percent of the funds added to the request are
for DOD, leaving nondefense R&D programs
collectively with the flat funding proposed in the request.
Defense research would benefit strongly from
House actions so far. Although the Pentagon requested a cut in DOD R&D
for the first time in a decade, the House would add $2.8 billion to
the request for DOD “S&T” programs (DOD investments in basic and
applied research and technology development), bringing funding close
to this year’s level, while also increasing funding as requested for
weapons systems development to bring DOD R&D to a record $73.6 billion,
$2.1 billion more than this year.
Both the House and the Senate would endorse
the Administration’s vision of space exploration for the National Aeronautics
and Space Administration (NASA), boosting total NASA R&D by more than
7 percent to focus on resuming construction of the Space Station and
embarking on the R&D efforts necessary for planned moon-and-Mars
missions, but at the cost of declining funding for other missions.
By shuffling money from defense accounts
to domestic accounts and rearranging defense priorities, the House and
the Senate would add funding to the Administration request for selected
R&D programs, but tight budget restrictions would still leave
most R&D programs with declining funding or increases falling short
of the 2.0 percent expected rate of inflation. In the House, nondefense
R&D would increase just 0.9 percent to $57.0 billion, a slight improvement
over the request (see Table 1),
with only NASA and the National Science Foundation (NSF)’s 2.6 percent
R&D increase running ahead of inflation (see Figure 1). The National
Institutes of Health (NIH) would make up almost half of the nondefense
portfolio with $27.9 billion for R&D in the House plan, but its
0.5 percent increase would fall far short of increases in previous years.
Even homeland security R&D, a big winner in previous years, would
level off: the House and the Senate would provide less than a 2 percent
increase for Department of Homeland Security (DHS) R&D.
Highlights of FY 2006 R&D in House and Senate Appropriations
Congress is working rapidly through the FY
2006 appropriations process to determine program-by-program funding
allocations for R&D programs for the fiscal year beginning October
1. Congress is responding to the President’s proposed budget, released
in February, which would make significant cuts in many areas of the
federal R&D portfolio. The House of Representatives approved all
(11) of its appropriations bills before the 4th of July recess for the
first time since 1988. The Senate has approved only 3 bills (out of
12), but has drafted 4 others for floor debate and approval in July.
But in July and September, Congress will face the daunting task of completing
the bills, which could be extremely difficult despite a good start.
Although two to four of the bills may get signed into law by then, the
others may be slowed down by Senate delays in drafting its versions,
other legislative agenda items such as a highway bill or the confirmation
of a new Supreme Court justice, or most likely by the problem of mismatched
bills: for the first time the House and Senate are going forward with
different numbers of bills instead of the traditional 13, and in at
least 4 bills there are major jurisdictional differences between House
and Senate versions to make House-Senate conferences difficult. The
federal R&D portfolio is divided among 10 bills in both the House
and the Senate. Because the House has completed action on the entire
federal R&D portfolio while the Senate has lagged behind slightly
in drafting appropriations for 8 of the 12 largest R&D funding agencies,
this analysis focuses mostly on House action. Tables 1,
2, and 3
provide details of House FY 2006 R&D appropriations, while Table
4 provides details of Senate action so far.
Figure 1. (click
on the image for PDF version)
- The House would provide a record $135.0 billion for the federal R&D
portfolio next year, an increase of $2.4 billion or 1.8 percent over
this year and a $2.8 billion boost over the request (see Table
1). Within the total, the federal research portfolio (basic and
applied) would be $56.7 billion, a 1.4 percent or $780 million increase
that would be $1.5 billion more than the request (see Table
2). In both cases, more than 90 percent of funds added to
the request are for DOD, leaving most nondefense
R&D programs at the flat or declining funding levels proposed in
the request (see Figure 1).
- DOD’s “S&T” programs and
DOE’s Office of Science would be the main
beneficiaries of House differences with Administration priorities.
The House would add $2.6 billion to the request for DOD’s S&T programs
to bring funding back near current levels at $13.5 billion instead of
a proposed 22 percent cut. Both the House and the Senate would add roughly
$200 million to the request for DOE’s Office
of Science to turn a proposed cut into a slight increase over this year,
with an emphasis on sustaining operating time at DOE scientific user
facilities and protecting domestic fusion research.
- But in the extremely tight
domestic budget approved by Congress this spring, in which overall domestic
spending would remain flat in 2006, congressional appropriators so far
have been able to make only modest additions to the nondefense
R&D request. The House-approved nondefense
R&D portfolio would be $57.0 billion, $520 million or 0.9 percent
more than this year but just $181 million more than the request;
excluding a boost to the Office of Science, the House would actually
go slightly below the request (see Table 1).
- To offset the additions to
the request, appropriators would trim funding in other areas. The
House would boost NSF R&D by 2.6 percent over this year back up
to last year’s funding level of $4.2 billion, but this would be slightly
less than the request because House appropriators would trim R&D
facilities funding to shore up NSF’s research directorates and non-R&D
education programs.
- Other R&D funding agencies
would see little to no change in funding because of the tight fiscal
environment. The House would provide the $28.7 billion request for
the NIH, but the 0.5 percent increase for next year would be the first
time in 24 years that the NIH budget would fail to keep pace with inflation
for the economy as a whole. Congress would slow growth in the Department
of Homeland Security R&D portfolio dramatically to less than 2 percent
(1.9 percent in the Senate, 1.3 percent in the House) after double-digit
percentage gains in the past few years because of competing homeland
security priorities.
- The clear winner in the nondefense R&D portfolio would be NASA (see Figure 1).
Both the House and the Senate would endorse the Administration’s
vision of space exploration for NASA, boosting total NASA R&D by
7.8 percent in the House and 7.1 percent in the Senate to $11.5 billion
so that the agency can focus on resuming construction of the Space Station
and embarking on the R&D efforts necessary for planned moon-and-Mars
missions. But part of the large apparent increase is because NASA recently
reduced the FY 2005 R&D budget by $284 million to pay for Space
Shuttle safety upgrades in preparation for its expected return to flight
this month; next year’s increase would still leave key NASA investments
in aeronautics, earth sciences, and biological and physical research
in decline.
- On the budget-cutting side, the
House would endorse the Administration’s plan to eliminate the Advanced
Technology Program (ATP) in the Department of Commerce and make steep
cuts in Commerce R&D by 21 percent to $911 million with steep cuts
to both the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and
the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the two
main Commerce R&D agencies.
- The federal basic and applied research portfolio would increase a modest
1.4 percent or $780 million to $56.7 billion in FY 2006 in the House
plan, in contrast to a requested cut (see Table
2). 90
percent of the $1.5 billion added to the request would go to DOD research,
which would have declined steeply in the request but would increase
1.1 percent in the House plan. Most agencies would see flat funding
for research, but the House would favor research at NASA, NSF, and DOE’s
Office of Science. NASA research would surge 16 percent next year to
$5.5 billion, but only back to last year’s level after equally steep
cuts in 2005 to pay for Space Shuttle safety upgrades through mid-year
budget cuts. NSF research would increase 2.5 percent to $3.8 billion
but only back to last year’s funding level after cuts in 2005. DOE Office
of Science research would climb 3.2 percent to $2.9 billion because
of House boosts and a planned decline in facilities funding. Other agencies
would see flat funding or cuts: NIH funding of research, nearly 50 percent
of the federal total, would increase just 1.1 percent in the House plan
and request, the smallest increase in more than two decades; USDA research
funding would fall 4.6 percent despite big additions to the request;
Commerce research would fall 16 percent because the House would slash
NOAA funding of environmental sciences research by 18 percent and NIST
funding of physical sciences and engineering research by 14 percent.
DHS plans only a modest increase in its research portfolio after big
start-up increases in previous years; the House plan would allow DHS
research to grow 1.3 percent to $500 million.
- The current focus on defense, space exploration, and homeland security
would result in large increases for defense, space and justice R&D,
and cuts for R&D in support of most other national missions
(see Table 3). Defense R&D (including
DOD, DOE’s defense activities, and the biodefense
portion of the DHS R&D portfolio) would climb $1.9 billion or 2.5
percent to a record-breaking $78.0 billion in House appropriations,
in contrast to a requested cut. After several years of near-parity between
defense and nondefense R&D around the
turn of the century, defense R&D would keep expanding to 57.7 percent
of total federal R&D. The majority of DHS R&D in the cross-cutting
area of homeland security would be classified under the justice mission;
justice R&D would increase 23.2 percent to $1.0 billion, though
most of this growth would come from DHS transportation R&D transferring
to the justice function to join other DHS R&D activities. And NASA’s
renewed commitment to space R&D after getting the Space Shuttle
back in flight this year would translate into a 9.2 percent boost to
space-related R&D to $10.6 billion. But cuts in NASA support of
aeronautics research, Federal Aviation Administration funding of aviation
research, and cuts in DHS aviation security activities would result
in a 14 percent cut in transportation R&D in the House; steep House-approved
cuts to NIST, including the elimination of the ATP, would result in
a 17.5 percent fall in commerce R&D. House-approved cuts to environmental
R&D in NOAA combined with nearly flat funding for the U.S. Geological
Survey (USGS) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) would result
in a 5.8 percent cut in natural resources and environment R&D for
a total of $2.0 billion.
- The Senate has lagged
behind the House, as is traditional, by drafting appropriations for
8 of the 12 largest R&D funding agencies before the July recess
(see Table 4) though not for DOD and
NIH, the two largest. The House and the Senate are so far in unusual
agreement in boosting R&D by similar amounts for NASA; adding funds
to steep proposed cuts in DOE Office of Science, USDA and USGS; and
providing similar modest increases for NSF, NIH, and DHS. The big
difference between the two chambers is in the Department of Commerce:
the Senate would boost Commerce R&D by a spectacular 10.8 percent
to $1.3 billion, in complete opposition to the House’s 21 percent cut.
- The FS&T budget would increase modestly by 1.4 percent to $62.2 billion
in the House appropriations bills (see Table
1; for full details, see the supplemental Table
A on the AAAS R&D web site). 80 percent of the increase would
be due to increases in NASA space exploration programs, leaving all
other programs with declining or barely increasing budgets. The FS&T
budget is a collection of selected R&D and non-R&D programs
that emphasize basic and applied research and the creation of new knowledge
or technologies. It also includes some S&T education and training
activities but excludes most development, and is designed to be an alternative
measure for the federal investment in science and technology.
FY 2006 Appropriations in Historical Context
The latest congressional budget plans would leave most nondefense R&D programs with flat or declining budgets
for more than a decade, and next year even biomedical and homeland security
research would decline from historical highs. Defense R&D would continue to
set new records, but defense funding of basic and applied research would fall
behind.
Figure 2. (click
on the image for PDF version)
In nondefense
R&D, the House appropriations’ 0.9 percent increase would fall behind the
2.0 percent expected rate of inflation. As Figure 2
shows, nondefense R&D investments
peaked in FY 2004, primarily because of the completed campaign to double the
NIH budget between 1998 and 2003 and also because of the creation of DHS to
fund new homeland security research. All the other nondefense
R&D funding agencies collectively have seen their budgets barely increase
over the past decade. Increases in the years to 2003 in nondefense
R&D served only to recover the lost ground of the mid-1990s when
discretionary spending declined in the push to balance the federal budget, but
since 2003 these investments have lost ground to inflation and would continue
to do so in FY 2006 House appropriations. Even nondefense
DHS R&D investments would lose ground for the first time. These non-NIH
agencies, combined with DOD’s research investments, fund nearly all of the
federal investment in the non-biomedical sciences, including the physical
sciences, non-medical life sciences, environmental sciences, engineering,
mathematics, computer sciences, and social sciences. For biomedical research,
NIH R&D would decline after hitting new highs in the immediate
post-doubling period.
Figure 3.
(click on the image for PDF version)
For defense R&D, Figure 3 shows
that nearly all of the enormous increases in the past few years have
been for weapons systems development, “6.4” or higher in the DOD
classification system. The trend continues in the House appropriations
with a 3.8 percent boost to weapons development activities. DOD’s S&T
investments (“6.1” through “6.3”), comprising basic and applied research
and technology development, lagged in the post-Cold War period but have
increased modestly in this decade. It took 16 years for DOD S&T
to recover from post-Cold War cuts to reach $13.6 billion in 2005, but
the Pentagon proposed to cut the portfolio by 22 percent in 2006. The
House would restore most of the cuts but would still leave S&T below
this year. The S&T accounts fund all of DOD’s investments in research,
including key federal contributions to the support of the physical sciences,
engineering, and other research fields.
The combination of flat or declining
funding for nondefense R&D agencies and
cuts in DOD research would leave the federal basic and applied research
investment in decline in the latest House plans. As shown in Figure
4, the federal research investment peaked in FY 2004, primarily because
of the NIH doubling campaign but also because of budget increases for
NSF and other nondefense agencies in a time of budget surpluses. But with
record-breaking budget deficits and consequent restrictions on domestic
spending, federal research investments fall in FY 2005 and would continue
to fall across all disciplinary groups in FY 2006.
Figure 4.
(click on the image for PDF version)
Agency Highlights in FY 2006 House and Senate R&D Appropriations So
Far
(For details on individual
agency appropriations, please see the agency R&D Funding Updates
on the AAAS R&D Web site.
The on-line version of this document contains links.)
- The House
has approved an FY 2006 budget for the National
Institutes of Health (NIH) that would essentially agree to NIH’s
request for $28.7 billion next year, an increase of $143 million or
0.5 percent. NIH R&D would rise 0.5 percent to $27.9 billion, failing
to keep pace with general inflation for the first time in 24 years (see
Table 1). Most NIH institutes would receive increases of between 0.3 and 0.7 percent
in the House plan. The largest percentage increase would go to
the Office of the Director (OD; up 35 percent) for biodefense
R&D transferred from another HHS unit but also to boost OD funding
for clinical research, high-risk basic research, and collaborative research
in the NIH Roadmap for Biomedical Research. R&D in the other Department
of Health and Human Services (HHS) agencies combined would fall $172
million or 13.2 percent to $1.1 billion (see Table
1). Most of the overall cut, however, would be due to the transfer
of biodefense R&D from the Office of the
Secretary to NIH.
- The House would provide $73.6 billion for R&D in the Department of Defense
(DOD), $2.1 billion more than the current year for
a 2.9 percent increase in contrast to a requested cut (see Table
1). The House would add $2.8 billion to the request for DOD “Science
and Technology” (S&T) programs for a total of $13.5 billion (see
Table 1). Most DOD services and agencies would gain substantially from
House appropriations. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
(DARPA) budget would increase 4.2 percent to $3.1 billion; the Missile
Defense Agency, however, would lose $1.2 billion in funding down to
$7.6 billion. The House would add funds for DOD support of basic and
applied research, much of it in the form of earmarks. Basic research
(“6.1”) would fall 4.0 percent to $1.5 billion, an improvement over
the Pentagon’s 13 percent proposed cut. Applied research (“6.2”) would
gain 4.2 percent to $5.1 billion, again despite steep cuts in the Pentagon
request.
- The National Aeronautics and
Space Administration (NASA), expecting the Space Shuttle to
return to flight this month, would shift its focus to its many R&D
challenges next year. In the latest Senate plan, the total NASA budget
of $16.4 billion would be a $200 million or 1.2 percent increase, but
NASA’s R&D funding would climb 7.1 percent in FY 2006 and an even
larger 7.8 percent in the House as a decline
in Shuttle costs frees up money for NASA’s R&D programs (see Tables
1 and 4).
The large apparent increase in NASA’s R&D is partly due to mid-year
cuts imposed recently in the 2005 budget. While the agency would receive
additional resources for its ambitious plans to finish construction
of the International Space Station, explore the solar system, and develop
the technologies needed for future moon and Mars missions, there would
also be steep cuts in NASA’s aeronautics research portfolio, the earth
sciences portfolio, and biological and physical research in both the
House and Senate plans. The Senate would allocate $250 million specifically
for a Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission in addition to regular
Hubble funds. There would be large boosts for robotic moon and Mars
exploration and development of a Crew Exploration Vehicle. NASA support
of research would surge 16 percent to $5.5 billion in the House plan
(see Table 2), but only to last year’s
level after an equally steep cut this year.
- The Senate
would provide $8.9 billion for R&D in the Department
of Energy (DOE) next year, a 3.1 percent
boost over FY 2005 in contrast to a requested cut of nearly 2.6 percent
(see Table 4). Both the House
and the Senate would add roughly $200 million to the request for DOE’s
Office of Science (OS) to boost utilization of scientific user facilities.
Science R&D would gain 1.3 percent in the Senate and 1.5 percent
in the House to $3.4 billion, both dramatic improvements over a requested
cut of 4.5 percent. Energy-related R&D would rise dramatically in
both the House and Senate appropriations to support Administration priorities
in hydrogen, coal, and nuclear energy R&D strongly while at the
same time sustaining DOE investments in other energy R&D areas.
In defense, there are sharp differences between House and Senate
plans: the Senate would moderate steep requested cuts while the House
would leave them in place, the Senate would eliminate funding entirely
for the National Ignition Facility unlike the House, and the Senate
would fund the controversial Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator program in 2006 at the requested $4 million but
the House would eliminate it.
- The National
Science Foundation (NSF) budget, after
declining in 2005, would barely increase by 1.1 percent to $5.5 billion
next year in the latest Senate plan, falling short of the $5.6 billion
in the House and Administration proposals and
even falling short of the $5.6 billion NSF had last year. NSF’s total
R&D funding would increase just 1.6 percent to $4.1 billion (see
Table 4), falling short of the 2.0 percent
expected inflation rate, while the House would go just above it with
a 2.6 percent boost (see Table 1). Most NSF
research directorates would receive increases between 1 and 3 percent
in 2006, which would barely bring their budgets back to last year’s
levels. Most of NSF’s education and training programs, however, would
suffer steep cuts for the second year in a row under the House, Senate,
and Administration plans. 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.
- The Senate and the House
would both slow recent growth in Department
of Homeland Security (DHS) R&D
funding. The Senate would provide $1.3 billion for DHS R&D in FY
2006, a small increase of $23 million or 1.9 percent (see Table 4),
after increases of more than $200 million in each of the past three
years, while the House would provide an even
smaller 1.3 percent boost (see Table 1). Congress would provide large boosts for DHS’
top R&D priorities, but would slash funding in other areas. The
biggest gains would go to radiological and nuclear countermeasures and
the chemical countermeasures portfolios, but they would be offset by
steep cuts in other areas of the DHS R&D portfolio.
- The House and
the Senate could not disagree more strongly on R&D funding in the
Department of Commerce. In a sharp reversal
from a 20.6 percent cut in the House appropriation
(see Table 1) and a similar one in the request,
the Senate would dramatically increase Commerce R&D by 10.8 percent
to $1.3 billion in FY 2006 (see Table 4).
The Senate would keep the Advanced Technology Program (ATP) funded at
this year’s budget of $140 million next year, in sharp contrast to House
and Administration plans to eliminate it. The House would slash National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) R&D by 23 percent,
while the Senate would boost it by 6.5 percent to $693 million (see
Table 4). The House and the Senate would agree, however, to sustain
the non-R&D Hollings Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) program
at $106 million, in contrast to a requested cut of almost two-thirds.
The two chambers would also agree on an increase of 6 percent to intramural
research at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)
to $335 million.
- The U.S.
Department of Agriculture (USDA), enjoying a record R&D
portfolio this year, would see its R&D funding fall by 1.3 percent
in the latest Senate budget plan and 7.4 percent in the House
plan (see Tables 1 and 4). Both proposals would be far higher than Administration
proposals for cuts of 14.6 percent. Both the House and the Senate would
add to the request to restore earmarked intramural research, construction,
and extramural research projects that the request proposed to delete.
Both the House and the Senate would reject USDA’s proposals to slash
formula funds in its extramural research portfolio, and both would keep
Hatch Act formula funding for land-grant colleges at $179 million, in
contrast to USDA proposals to eliminate half of this funding and shift
the funds to a new $75 million competitive research grants program.
Both chambers would boost competitive grants in the National Research
Initiative.
- Unlike the House, the Senate would cut the Environmental
Protection Agency’s (EPA) R&D budget by $20 million or 3.5
percent in its latest budget plan (see Table 4). The House
would provide a modest increase (see Table 1). Both the House and the
Senate would agree with EPA’s plan to boost homeland security-related
R&D, with increases for decontamination research and drinking water
security research.
- The Senate
would boost R&D in the Department of the
Interior with a 2.1 percent increase to $628 million, more than
the House’s 0.7 percent boost. Both the House
and the Senate would reverse proposed cuts to R&D in the U.S.
Geological Survey (USGS), including proposed cuts to the USGS mineral
resources R&D program.
- The House
would once again reject the Department of Veterans
Affairs’ (VA) proposal to reorganize
its budget to fully report all costs associated with its R&D portfolio,
including support and personnel costs.
VA federal R&D would total $786 million in FY 2006 in the
House plan (see Table 1), the same as the request
and up slightly by 0.3 percent from this year’s budget.
- Department
of Transportation (DOT)
R&D funding is
in limbo as Congress struggles to reauthorize transportation programs,
but the House would provide an estimated $727 million for DOT R&D
programs in FY 2006, a cut of 2.4 percent (see Table
1). Pending the outcome of transportation authorization negotiations,
there would be a modest increase in highway R&D to $345 million.
R&D in the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) would decline
6.5 percent to $246 million in the House plan.
Budget Outlook and Next Steps
In July, appropriations action shifts to the Senate, which has so far approved
only 3 of its 12 appropriations bills. Another four bills are ready
for full Senate debate and approval this month, while the Senate Appropriations
Committee may draft its remaining appropriations bills, including appropriations
for NIH and DOD. Because Congress is working from its FY 2006 budget
resolution essentially agreeing to the President’s requested total for
discretionary spending of $843 billion next year, there is little room
for Congress to change the request substantially, as already demonstrated
in appropriations action so far. The little flexibility Congress has
shown so far is primarily due to the shift of some defense spending
to domestic spending, offset by the shift of billions in defense spending
through budgetary tricks from the regular DOD budget to emergency funding.
Thus, the big additions in R&D have come in DOD while domestic R&D
programs have changed little from the request.
Within this fiscal environment,
continuing restraint on discretionary spending and thus federal R&D
is likely to be the final result of the FY 2006 appropriations process.
So while the federal investment in defense R&D will increase substantially
next year because of accounting maneuvers, the rest of the federal R&D
portfolio can look forward to another year of flat or declining funding
and a continuation of the downward trends of the last few years. To
add insult to injury, the unprecedented task of reconciling 11 House
bills with 12 Senate bills, some of them completely different in jurisdiction,
means that these flat budgets may not be finalized until well after
the October 1 start of the fiscal year in a year-end omnibus appropriations
bill rolling together several bills into one package. Last year, the
FY 2005 omnibus bill wasn’t signed into law until December 8; similar
delays are likely this fall.
- July 7, 2005
AAAS R&D Budget and Policy Program
American Association for the Advancement of Science
1200 New York Ave, NW
Washington, DC 20005
(202) 326-6607
science_policy@aaas.org
http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd
Go to Tables
1-4
.
