AAS Informational Email 2006-02

Kevin Marvel, Deputy Executive Officer

Summary: The FY 2006 budget process wrapped up on 30 December 2005 when President Bush signed the final appropriations bills into law. Although the enacted total federal R&D expenditure for FY 2006 climbed by 1.7% to $134.8B compared to FY 2005, 97 percent of the increase goes to only defense weapons development and human space exploration technologies. The AAAS Science and Public Policy program provides a R&D budget summary, portions of which are presented and a link to the full report is provided.

Details

[Note: all referenced figures can be found on the link provided in the first paragraph. Detailed budget information can always be found on the AAS Public Policy
pages: http://www.aas.org/policy/. ]

The FY 2006 budget was finally passed into law by President Bush on December 30, 2005. The AAAS has concluded writing an excellent summary of the R&D funding situation for FY 2006. It can be found in its entirety at http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd/upd1205.htm . The news is not good for R&D, with most agency budgets declining. Highlights of the AAAS analysis are included below.

"On December 30, nearly three months into the fiscal year, President Bush signed the last two FY 2006 appropriations bills into law, bringing the FY 2006 appropriations process to a close. AAAS estimates that the federal R&D portfolio totals $134.8 billion in 2006, a $2.2 billion or 1.7 percent increase. But 97 percent of the increase goes to just two areas: defense weapons development and human space exploration technologies. Funding for all other federal R&D programs collectively will barely increase, and will fall nearly 2 percent after adjusting for inflation. Leaving out large federal investments in development, congressional appropriations for basic and applied research total $57.0 billion, an increase of $1.0 billion or 1.8 percent over 2005. But NASA applied research on human space flight technologies accounts for a majority of the increase, leaving most agency research portfolios with modest increases falling short of inflation, or cuts. Many flagship federal science agencies have disappointing budgets in 2006: the National Institutes of Health (NIH) budget falls for the first time in 36 years; the National Science Foundation (NSF) wins a small increase but has less in real terms for its research portfolio than in any of the last three years; the Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science budget declines, and despite big increases in development funding the Department of Defense (DOD)'s basic research funding declines."

"In the customary year-end crush of legislation, Congress cleared the final Defense appropriations bill on 22 December. In addition to regular funding for DOD, the Defense bill contained emergency supplemental appropriations for Gulf Coast reconstruction, avian flu preparedness, and Iraq and Afghanistan military operations, but to pay for some of these emergencies the bill also contained a 1 percent across-the-board cut for all discretionary programs, even those whose budgets had already been signed into law earlier. Even before the across-the-board cut appeared, the President and Congress had agreed to cut overall domestic discretionary spending by nearly 1 percent, but now it appears that domestic spending will fall almost 2 percent in 2006. In FY 2006, funding for domestic programs continues on a downward curve after several years of generous annual increases earlier in the decade, and the federal R&D investment lands on the same downward side of the slope in 2006."

"The National Science Foundation (NSF) budget, after declining in 2005, rebounds to $5.6 billion in 2006, less than the request. But inflation, the across-the-board cut, and new non-R&D costs for polar icebreakers leave NSF with less R&D funding in real terms than in each of the last three years."

"Despite tough times, R&D earmarks set a new record in 2006, climbing to $2.4 billion in 2006, up 13 percent from last year's previous record, according to the AAAS analysis of congressionally designated, performer-specific R&D projects in FY 2006 appropriations. Although these projects amount to only 1.7 percent of total R&D, they remain concentrated in a few key agencies and programs. Five agencies (USDA, $331 million; NASA, $317 million; DOE, $524 million; the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in Commerce, $184 million; and DOD, $852 million) receive 94 percent of the total R&D earmarks, while NIH, NSF, and DHS remain earmark-free. In some programs, R&D earmarks make up more than 20 percent of total program funds. (For full details see the AAAS R&D Funding Update on R&D Earmarks in the FY 2006 Budget, available on the AAAS R&D web site)."

"The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has a budget of $16.6 billion in 2006, $2.5 percent or $400 million more than last year, but $350 million of the increase is emergency funding to repair facilities damaged by Hurricane Katrina. But there are big changes within the essentially flat budget: NASA's R&D funding climbs 6.2 percent or $661 million to $11.4 billion as an expected decline in non-R&D Space Shuttle costs frees up money for NASA R&D programs (see Table 1 and Figure 2). The entire increase and more goes to Constellation Systems (up $712 million, nearly tripling to $1.1 billion) for applied research on the next generation of human space vehicles, leaving funding for all other NASA R&D programs down. There are steep cuts in aeronautics research (down 3.4 percent to $930 million), the earth sciences portfolio (down 8.3 percent to $2.1 billion), and especially biological and physical sciences research (down 14.4 percent to $791 million). The large R&D increase comes after a similarly sized cut in 2005, and leaves NASA R&D funding flat in real terms for the last decade (see Figure 7)."

"After a year-end across-the-board cut, the Department of Energy (DOE) has $8.6 billion in its final 2006 budget for R&D activities, a slight cut of 0.1 percent (see Table 1). Although DOE's Office of Science (OS) originally received a modest increase in its R&D portfolio, an across-the-board cut in December leaves the Science portfolio down 0.4 percent to $3.3 billion. DOE requested an even steeper cut, but Congress added $130 million in congressional earmarks and a boost in computing research. The final budget will lead to dramatic cuts in DOE support of operating times at scientific user facilities. Energy- related R&D appears to gain 9.6 percent to $1.3 billion because of a rescission in 2005, but actual funding declines slightly. Congress supports Administration priorities in coal and nuclear energy R&D, but there are cuts in other energy areas including the Administration priorities of hydrogen and fuel cells, and earmarks dominate most energy portfolios. Congress terminates the controversial Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator program in 2006. DOE's defense R&D declines 2.4 percent to $4.0 billion, including a steep cut to defense computing research."
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Mailed to US members from aas.org 17 January 2006

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