AAS Informational Email 2006-03

The President's FY 2007 Budget for Astronomy

Jack Burns, Chair, AAS Committee for Astronomy and Public Policy

and

Kevin Marvel, Deputy Executive Officer

SUMMARY

The President's budget for FY2007 contains both good news and bad. On the good-news front, through the President's American Competitiveness Initiative, NSF is slated to receive a 7.8% increase and the Department of Energy's Office of Science is slated to receive a 14% increase.
Astronomy and Astrophysics programs funded through these agencies can expect increases if the Congress approves the President's Budget. On the negative side, the NASA budget contains significant cuts to many basic research programs, including those in the three NASA directorates that strongly support members of the AAS. The AAS Committee on Astronomy and Public Policy and the elected leaders of the AAS are working diligently to carefully develop a year- Long strategy to enforce the portions of the President's budget that contain good news and reverse the portions that contain cuts. This email provides a quick overview of the budget situation and outlines the broad themes guiding the development of the AAS strategy that will be communicated to AAS members in subsequent ACTION ALERT emails.

DETAILS

On Monday, 6 February 2006, President Bush submitted his budget to Congress. A more detailed summary of the budget will be available on the AAS Policy web pages at www.aas.org/policy, as this summary is just meant to touch on the very top-level items.

The good news is that the President has undertaken an initiative, first announced in his State of the Union address, dubbed the "American Competitiveness Initiative". A (many MB) brochure highlighting the program can be downloaded from www.ostp.gov/html/ACIBooklet.pdf and a fact sheet is available at www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/01/20060131-5.html
The core of the ACI is a tax break for American companies that invest in R&D, the so-called "research and experimentation tax credit", which provides tax reductions for mainly large companies that invest certain amounts in certain types of R&D. A smaller portion of the ACI is an increase in funding for three of the core science agencies, NSF, DOE Office of Science and NIST. From a cost standpoint, the tax break costs taxpayers about 75% of the total ACI cost and the increases to the agency budgets are the remaining 25%. The obvious missing piece from this agenda is NASA. Luckily, a large number of senators, led by Senators Domenici, Alexander, Bingaman and Mikulski have sought to rectify this problem in the Preserving America's Competitive Edge act via a suite of bills that put into law many of the recommendations from the "Rising Above the Gathering Storm" report from the National Academy. Of note is S.R. 2198, the PACE-Education act, which includes authorization for a 10% increase through 2013 for NASA basic research funding in the various science directorates. With 53 co-sponsors and more signing on daily, it is likely this bill will pass. The task for the space science community is to convert this authorization into appropriations. (Note: thank you notes to these four senators and any of the bill co-sponsors for introducing the legislation might be a good idea for concerned space
scientists.)

The President's Science advisor Jack Marburger spoke at a special OSTP budget roll-out briefing and highlighted the various percentages up and down, with the near-term news being a 7.8% increase for NSF. Also of note is the 14% increase for DOE's Office of Science. NIST got an increase as well, though confusingly it is listed as a negative increase in the ACI brochure, which I thought implied a decrease, but actually one must compensate for the highly earmarked NIST budget when adding funding (don't blame me, I just work in this town, I don't write the documents).
The long-term goal is to double these three agencies' research portfolios by 2016 from their FY2006 levels. Twenty to thirty percent of this increase is due to inflation alone, but it still represents a significant governmental commitment to basic research compared to past years.

The NASA outlook was not so rosy. Numerous programs in the Science Mission Directorate (SMD) received reductions. Overall the NASA budget request for FY 2007 goes up 3.2% to $16.8B. This total and the increase ignores the emergency spending money provided to NASA for hurricane recovery activities. The SMD request is $5.3B, up roughly 1.5% from FY 2006. Given current rates of inflation, this represents a decline in the overall SMD budget. Although some in the administration would defend the SMD budget as being larger now than it has been in the past, the harsh reality is that (as a fraction of NASA's overall budget) with full-cost accounting and other issues, some would argue that less funding is available in real terms today than was available a decade or so ago.

A few specific reductions need to be highlighted:

Some programs did see growth however:

All of these numbers are relative to the 2006 funded level provided in documents released by the President, and do not reflect any modifications to the NASA operating plan. Additionally, they do not reference the planned 2007 budget from past year budgets (the so-called out-year funding levels). If they did, where the President has proposed the funding level to be this year would stand in stark contrast to the past plans.

The AAS Executive Committee and the Committee on Astronomy and Public Policy are actively working on a policy response to the budget proposal. Remember that the President proposes while the Congress disposes. A strongly worded statement from the chairman of the House Science Committee, Representative Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY), (www.house.gov/science) deplored the cuts to NASA's science programs and pledged to help NASA science during the appropriations process. Get ready for a long, hot summer.

Pay attention to AAS Action Alerts and Informational Emails for the most accurate information on all the cuts as well as descriptions of positive actions you can make to help secure a brighter future for astronomy funding.
___________________________________________________________

Mailed to US members from aas.org 21 February 2006

To read previous AAS Informational Emails visit
http://www.aas.org/policy/InformationalEmails.html
To read previous AAS Action Alerts visit
http://www.aas.org/policy/ActionAlerts.html

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