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| R&D in Selected Agencies
Kei Koizumi, AAAS |
HIGHLIGHTS
DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE The FY 2000 request for the Department of Commerce totals $7.3 billion, a nearly $2.2 billion increase over FY 1999. Nearly all of the increase would go to the implementation of the 2000 Census. Final plans for the 2000 Census, including a final decision on whether scientific sampling will be used, have not been approved by Congress. Congress and the Administration must come to an agreement on an authorization for the Census by June 15, 1999; as an incentive to reach an agreement, all programs in the FY 1999 Commerce, Justice, State appropriations bill received funding only until June 15. If a Census authorization including an extension of FY 1999 funding for the rest of the fiscal year is not enacted by then, the Commerce R&D programs discussed below will shut down after June 15. Commerce's R&D budget would increase by 9.0 percent or $97 million to $1.2 billion (see Table II-14). Most of the increase is due to two programs in the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST): the Advanced Measurement Laboratory (AML) and the Advanced Technology Program (ATP). The AML, funded through the Construction account, will be a state-of-the-art laboratory facility at NIST's main campus in Maryland. Of the $107 million Construction request, $95 million would go to begin construction of the AML. The ATP would receive $219 million for its R&D activities in FY 2000, a $40 million or 22.7 percent increase. The increase would enable ATP to continue its current projects and also to conduct a new general competition covering all areas of technology. ATP provides cost-shared, precompetitive research grants to industrial firms for developing promising new technologies with commercial potential. NIST's intramural R&D, funded in the Scientific and Technical Research and Services (STRS) account, would receive $240 million for R&D activities, an increase of 2.9 percent. NIST's labs provide U.S. industry with industrial standards and measurement technologies, and aim to bridge the gap between industrial R&D in company laboratories and the more basic research conducted in university and government labs. The other NIST account, not classified as R&D, is the Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP). MEP provides technical assistance to businesses with fewer than 500 employees through a nationwide network of centers and field stations. The $100 million request is down $7 million from FY 1999 because states and local governments would assume a greater share of program costs in FY 2000. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Commerce's other major R&D agency, performs R&D related to its mission of environmental stewardship of coastal and marine environments and the atmosphere to ensure sustainable economic opportunities. Of NOAA's $2.5 billion FY 2000 discretionary budget, $600 million (the same as FY 1999) would go to R&D. Although the total request would represent an increase of nearly $300 million, the increases would go to non-R&D programs in systems procurement and a Pacific Coastal Salmon Recovery initiative. (For details of NOAA's R&D request, please see Chapter 16.) DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR The Department of the Interior's R&D would total $590 million in FY 2000 (up 18.2 percent) out of a total budget of $8.6 billion (up 12.7 percent). The large increase is due to a restructuring in the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), Interior's primary science agency. USGS R&D would increase $91 million or 21.2 percent to $520 million out of a total USGS budget of $838 million (up 5.0 percent). The FY 2000 USGS budget would consolidate R&D facilities costs into the existing Facilities account and would consolidate all administration costs for R&D into a new Science Support account. In addition, USGS would consolidate some of its existing research in a $48 million Integrated Science account to integrate different scientific disciplines to generate more unified responses to Interior's science needs. In addition to transferred research programs from other accounts, there would be $15 million in new funding to address high-priority needs of Interior land managers, including developing strategies for ecosystem restoration, investigating and restoring declining species, and studying invasive species. As a result of these account changes, year-to-year comparisons in USGS are difficult, and the preliminary figures provided by USGS and shown in Table II-16 may understate FY 1998 and FY 1999 USGS R&D and therefore, overstate the FY 2000 increase. (For more information on Interior R&D, please see Chapters 16, 17, and 18.) DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION (DOT) DOT asks for a total budget in FY 2000 of $53 billion (up 4.7 percent), including appropriations, transportation trust funds, and mandatory programs. Over half would go toward the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), mostly for spending out of the highway trust funds for road projects. R&D is a relatively small part of the DOT budget and would total only $836 million in FY 2000, but this would represent an increase of $233 million, or 38.7 percent (see Table II-15). Transportation funding increased dramatically beginning in FY 1999 as a result of the six-year (FY 1998-2003) reauthorization of transportation programs known as the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century (TEA-21), which was signed into law last June. The law specifies that transportation tax revenues will be devoted exclusively to transportation and specifies formulas for allocating these funds. In the past, a portion of these revenues were used to finance other federal programs. As a result, DOT's budget climbs from $44 billion in FY 1998 to $50 billion in FY 1999, with a further increase to $53 billion in FY 2000. The Administration proposes to reallocate a portion of increased transportation tax revenues in FY 2000 for purposes not currently specified in TEA-21, including R&D. FHWA R&D would total $459 million in FY 2000 under the proposal, up $202 million or 78.3 percent over FY 1999, of which nearly $160 million would come from reallocated funds. The proposal would more than double funding for surface transportation research to $180 million (up from $73 million) for research on transportation structures, pavements, and highway safety. Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) R&D would more than triple to $107 million to finance research on intelligent vehicles and advanced electronic and information technologies to improve the safety and productivity of existing roads. DOT also proposes to reallocate TEA-21 funds to help finance increases in R&D in other DOT agencies (see Table II-15), including the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) and the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration (NHTSA). The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) would increase its R&D investment by 9.3 percent or $21 million to $246 million in FY 2000. Most of the increase is due to $16 million in new funds for the Flight 2000 research program, an initiative to develop improved air-traffic and navigation systems for commercial airliners. FAA also finances R&D on airport security, new aircraft structures, aircraft safety, and human factors in aviation. Although R&D is only a small portion of the total DOT budget, the Administration proposals to allocate additional revenue to R&D and other purposes may not be received favorably by Congress, which has traditionally favored funds for highway construction and maintenance. ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY (EPA) EPA's budget would total $7.2 billion in FY 2000, a cut of $384 million or 5.1 percent from FY 1999 because of cuts to state and tribal assistance grants. EPA's R&D would also decline, from $669 million to $645 million in FY 2000 (see Table II-17). EPA states that most continuing R&D programs would receive level funding or slight increases, and that the overall decrease is due to a decision not to renew congressionally designated FY 1999 research projects. In response to the Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA), EPA has organized its programs around 10 strategic goals. As Table II-17 shows, EPA's R&D activities contribute to eight of them. In order to fulfill its goal of achieving clean air, EPA would focus its clean air research agenda on particulate matter (PM) research in FY 2000. In recent years, Congress has urged EPA to fund more research on PM before attempting to regulate it. In FY 1999, Congress appropriated $56 million for PM research, and the FY 2000 request would provide $62 million. Through the research program, EPA hopes to better understand the effects of PM on humans, to develop more accurate measurement technologies, and to better track PM sources. Most of EPA's R&D is organized around the strategic goal of "Sound Science, Improved Understanding of Environmental Risk, and Greater Innovation to Address Environmental Problems." The $270 million budgeted for this goal in FY 2000 would address long-term research needs in ecosystems assessment and restoration, human health risk assessment, emerging environmental risks, and new technologies for pollution prevention. These programs aim to strengthen the scientific basis for EPA's environmental protection activities and to better integrate risk assessment into the agency's priority-setting process. Programs in the Sound Science goal also nurture ties between EPA and the wider scientific community. The Postdoctoral Initiative brings postdoctoral candidates into EPA labs; the Science to Achieve Results (STAR) program provides peer-reviewed research grants to universities, nonprofits, and other external performers; and Regional Geographic Initiatives foster partnerships between EPA and local governments to address local environmental problems. Although most of EPA's R&D is funded in the Science and Technology account, the Superfund program also funds R&D, a total of $37 million in FY 2000 (down 6.0 percent) that is transferred to the S&T account for research on assessing and remediating contaminated sites. Superfund would also transfer $49 million in FY 2000 to the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) for its basic research program on environmental health issues. | |
