NEWS OF THE WEEK FEDERAL
BUDGET
BUSH'S FUNDING PRIORITIES With the exception of N I H , research ranks low on the President's list Ν HIS FIRST ADDRESS TO AJOINT
FIRST BUDGET Bush outlines his spending plans, including a commitment to double NIH funding, during his inaugural speech to Congress.
"I enthusiasti cally welcome the focus on graduate stu dent stipends, which—as I have often said—are long overdue for an increase." NSF Director Rita R. Colwell 12
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session of Congress last week, President George W Bush out lined "a new budget and a new approach for governing our coun try" Abudget's impact, he noted, "is counted in dollars, but meas ured in lives. Excellent schools, quality health care, a secure retire ment, a cleaner environment, a stronger defense—these are all important and we fund them." And fund them he plans to do, as is evident in the Administra tion's budget outline presented to Congress the following day. Funding for elementary and sec ondary education, for exam ple, is proposed to increase by $1.9 billion in 2002, a 10% in crease. Overall, Bush plans total spending of $ 1.96 trillion in fiscal 2002, including $661 billion in discretionary spending, leaving a projected surplus of $283 billion. Because the 207-page "Blue print for New Begmnings" is just an outline, comparisons with pre vious and current-year spending are few and far between. Gener ally only the totals for departments and agencies are spelled out. The blueprint will be augmented in April with a detailed, agency-byagency program-by-program lineitem budget proposal. This budget continues the pre vious Administration's and Con gress' commitment to double funding for the National Insti tutes of Health by 2003 from the 1998 level. A $2.8 billion budget increase to $23.1 billion will be "the largest annual funding increase in N I H history," the White House notes. To maximize future budgetary and manage ment flexibility the blueprint sug2001
gests that N I H might want to consider funding the total costs of an increasing number of new grants in the grant's first year, and supporting some one-time activ ities such as high-priority and con struction and renovation projects. The National Science Founda tion is slated for a mere $56 mil lion rise to $4.5 billion for 2002. The budget provides $1.5 billion to fund nearly 10,000 new com petitive, reviewed research and education awards. It also pro vides $200 million to begin a new initiative to strengthen math and science education in grades K-12, $20 million for multidisciplinary mathematics research, and other funds to increase NSF graduate stipends. Raising a cautionary flag, the blueprint says, "The current size of NSF grants and their duration might be resulting in an inefficient research process at U.S. academic institutions.... NSF has increased grant size and duration in previous years, particularly through its pri ority research areas; however, there is little documentation that this is having a positive impact on research output." T h e document goes on to promise that NSF will "develop efficiency measures of the re search process and determine what is the right grant size for the myriad types of research the agency funds" in time for prepa ration of the 2003 budget. The Department of Defense gets a $14.2 billion, 4.8% increase to $296 billion in the proposal, including $2.6 billion for research and development for new tech nologies such as missile defense alternatives. The blueprint pro
vides no total number for D O D spending on its research, devel opment, test, and evaluation pro gram in fiscal 2002, but it does promise "a thorough review of research and development pro grams to determine the most promising investments for the future." In the blueprint, the Depart ment of Energy's total budget falls 3% to $19.0 billion, despite a 5%, $275 million increase for the department's nuclear weapons stockpile stewardship program. The budget calls for allocating up to $1.2 billion of the bonus money paid by those winning permits to drill for oil and gas in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to solar and o t h e r renewable energy re search programs. The budget proposal also calls for suspending new funding for the Department of Commerce's Advanced Technology Program, run by the National Institute of Standards & Technology, but it never mentions N I ST by name nor does it give a budget figure for NIST's 2002 operations. The Environmental Protec tion Agency's budget falls 6.4% to $7.3 billion for 2 0 0 2 . How ever, the Administration says the $499 million reduction is almost entirely the result of not funding congressionally directed spend ing initiatives that were not as sessed as part of a merit-based or peer-reviewed process. Refusal to fund such projects is one of the unifying themes of the Bush Administration's first budget. It estimates that eliminating such projects from the D e p a r t m e n t of Agricul ture's research b u d g e t — n o total given—will save taxpayers $150 million. It remains to be seen how the Republican-dominated Congress will react to a Repub lican President's elimination of their favorite research projects. Bill Clinton certainly didn't have much luck when he tried. — JANICE LONG
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