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Jan 17, 2008

Science advocates analyze federal research funding

The following is an update from the American Association for the Advancement of Science regarding federal research appropriations. You can learn more about AAAS at http://www.aaas.org/.

Keith Yehle
Director of Federal Relations

Congress gave final approval on December 19 to an omnibus appropriations bill combining the 11 unfinished 2008 appropriations bills, which the President is expected to sign shortly to bring the 2008 budget process to a close. The $550 billion bill, which includes regular funding for domestic programs, emergency funding for veterans programs and other priorities, and $70 billion in emergency war funding, is a sharp retreat from congressional plans over the last several months to add as much as $22 billion to the President's request for domestic spending. Instead of allowing domestic spending to at least keep pace with inflation as planned, appropriators responded to promised and actual presidential vetoes over the extra spending by keeping overall 2008 funding for most domestic programs flat with last year.

The federal investment in research and development (R&D) in 2008 would decline dramatically from earlier congressional plans. The AAAS FY 2008 Appropriations Summary Update, now available on the AAAS R&D web site, shows the federal investment in basic and applied research for FY 2008 gaining just 1.1 percent to $57.5 billion, less than inflation and far less than earlier congressional appropriations. The federal research investment would decline in real terms for the fourth year in a row. Total federal R&D (including development) would increase 1.2 percent to $142.7 billion. In jettisoning most of the $22 billion in domestic spending added in earlier appropriations bills, the omnibus bill would subtract roughly $2 billion from earlier appropriations for nondefense R&D. Although most R&D funding agencies would still receive increases, several key R&D agencies would fall behind the 2.4 percent expected inflation rate.

Funding for basic research in the physical sciences, a key element of various plans to sustain U.S. economic competitiveness, would fall well short of a planned doubling path over the next decade. The omnibus bill would take away most of the requested increases for the three physical sciences agencies in the American Competitiveness Initiative (the Department of Energy's (DOE) Office of Science, the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) laboratories) in order to reverse requested cuts in medical research, energy R&D, and environmental research. NSF would see only a 1 percent increase in its R&D funding instead of a larger increase, while most National Institutes of Health (NIH) institutes would get flat funding at FY 2007 levels instead of requested cuts. A 15 percent requested increase for DOE's Office of Science would be trimmed to just 5 percent to turn requested cuts in DOE's energy R&D programs such as carbon sequestration, biomass, and solar energy into a 23 percent increase. The omnibus bill would restore funding for climate change science and other environmental research in several agencies.

The omnibus bill contains $927 million in R&D earmarks in 2008 after an earmark moratorium in 2007, down from $1.5 billion in domestic R&D earmarks in 2006. The R&D earmarks in the 2008 omnibus bill would exceed the $786 million the bill would add to the President's request for nondefense R&D programs. In November, Congress approved a final Department of Defense (DOD) budget with $3.5 billion in R&D earmarks.

The FY 2008 Appropriations Summary will be updated in early January with additional information. The report contains highlights of R&D in final FY 2008 appropriations, highlights of the major R&D funding agencies, and summary tables and charts reflecting final 2008 appropriations actions.

Agency tables reflecting omnibus appropriations for the major R&D funding agencies are now available at the AAAS R&D web site, and will be supplemented in coming weeks by AAAS R&D Funding Updates on final 2008 appropriations for all the major R&D funding agencies.