The President's fiscal year (FY) 2000 budget is constrained by a cap on discretionary spending. As a result, many agencies' research and development (R&D) programs are slated for cuts or level funding in the budget, and future projections are grim. The budget proposal does, however, find room for significant increases for a few priority programs and some new initiatives in FY 2000.
- The total request for federal R&D in FY 2000 is $77.9 billion, $1.4 billion or 1.7 percent less than FY 1999 (see Chapter 1 and Table II-1).
- Nondefense R&D would exceed defense R&D for the first time since the Carter Administration, which would fulfill a Clinton Administration goal. Nondefense R&D would increase by 3.6 percent to $39.4 billion, or 50.6 percent of total R&D (see Table I-4 and Chapter 3). The increase would be slightly ahead of the expected 2.0 percent inflation rate. Defense R&D would fall $2.7 billion to $38.5 billion, a decline of 6.6 percent.
- Among mission areas, R&D in general science, energy, transportation, agriculture, and commerce are priorities in the FY 2000 request (see Table I-4 and Chapter 3).
- Basic research continues to be a high priority for the Clinton Administration. Basic research would total $18.1 billion, an increase of $816 million or 4.7 percent, following an even larger increase of $1.8 billion in FY 1999 appropriations (see Table II-2 and Chapter 3.)
- The AAAS analysis of the outyear projections in the FY 2000 budget shows that nondefense R&D would increase from $38.1 billion in FY 1999 to $39.4 billion in FY 2004, but this gain becomes a 6.7 percent decline after adjusting for expected inflation (see Table I-15 and Chapter 3). Defense R&D would fall 14.3 percent in inflation-adjusted terms, even as total defense spending would rise.
- Federal support for R&D at colleges and universities would increase 2.3 percent to $15.5 billion. The largest agency sponsor of academic research would continue to be the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS; $9.6 billion), with 62 percent of total federal support. Nearly all HHS support comes from the National Institutes of Health (NIH; see Chapter 3 and Tables I-7 and I-8).
- Industry support for R&D continues to grow far faster than federal R&D or the U.S. economy as a whole. U.S. industrial R&D is expected to increase by 9.3 percent in 1999, following similar increases in the past three years. Total U.S. R&D is expected to reach $236 billion in 1999 (see Chapter 4).
- Information technology (IT) is a high priority in the request. The FY 2000 budget proposes $366 million for the Information Technology for the Twenty-First Century (IT2) initiative, a multi-agency effort in long-term information technology research and infrastructure. The National Science Foundation (NSF; $146 million), the Department of Energy (DOE; $70 million), and the Department of Defense (DOD; $100 million) would be the lead agencies in this effort (see Chapter 23).
- NSF, DOE's nondefense programs, and USDA emerge as favored agencies in the request because of their support for the priority areas of basic research, general science and energy-related R&D, and the IT2 initiative. NSF's R&D budget would increase by 6.5 percent to $2.9 billion (see Table II-7 and Chapter 8). DOE's nondefense R&D programs in science and energy would increase by 8.3 percent to $4.0 billion (see Table II-11 and Chapter 10). R&D in the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) would increase by 11.4 percent to $1.9 billion because of $120 million in new mandatory funds for competitively awarded research grants (see Table II-13 and Chapter 12).
- NIH, recipient of a nearly $2 billion increase in FY 1999, would increase by a smaller $318 million or 2.1 percent in FY 2000 for an R&D budget of $15.3 billion (see Table II-9 and Chapter 9).
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