NEWSFOCVS
Bush's 1993 Budget Proposes 5% Increase in Fundingfor R&D NSF's budget would exceed $3 billion, individual investigators would get more support, and various science education plans would receive more funding David J. Hanson, Bette Hileman, Wil Lepkowski, Janice R. Long, and Pamela S. Zurer, C&EN Washington resident Bush's budget proposal for fiscal 1993, sub mitted to Congress on Jan. 30, calls for increased spending on federal R&D activities, but the overall increase he is seeking isn't so large as in his two previous comprehensive budget proposals, primarily because of a scaleback in defense-related research activities. Under the President's 1993 budget proposal, overall outlays to conduct R&D would be up 5%, or $3.1 billion over current levels, to $72.8 billion. Within that total, outlays for defense R&D, conducted by both the departments of Defense and Energy, would increase 4% to $41.6 billion. However, for ci vilian R&D outlays would rise 6% to $28.1 billion. Funding for basic research follows the same pattern as conduct of R&D funding, with outlays for defense basic re search slated to rise 8% to $1.3 billion and for civilian basic research 7% to $12.1 billion. The only thing not going up in the overall R&D budget is facilities funding, outlays for which would fall 3% to $3.2 billion. The fiscal 1993 budget proposal contains a number of new, or at least redefined, applied research initiatives. The Federal Coordinating Council for Science, Engineering &
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Technology (FCCSET), which operates under the auspices of the White House's Office of Science & Technology Policy (OSTP), took a look at two new areas this year. The council performs crosscut analyses of the research programs being carried out by various federal agencies in specific areas of sci ence and technology and then develops coordinated national strategies for meeting long-range goals in those areas. As a result, there is a new Presidential initiative in ad vanced materials and processing funded at a level of $1.8 bil lion, an increase of $162 million over current funding, and an other in biotechnology research funded at $4.0 billion, an increase of $271 million. Continuing as Presidential science and technology initiatives under the coordinating council's umbrella are high-performance computing and communi cations, up $148 million to $803 million; global-change re search, up $263 million to $1.4 billion; and mathematics and science education, up $147 million to $2.1 billion. In the following sections, C&EN provides a closer look at the R&D budgets proposed for the various federal agencies that support research activities, starting with the largest R&D funding source. Defense Department. The most unusual feature of this year's more than 1700-page budget book prepared by OMB that sets forth the facts and figures behind the fiscal 1993 budget is that the military functions of DOD are missing
Defense still accounts for 60% of federal R&D spending...
.. .while NIH gets lions share of nondefense R&D funds
$ Billions
$ Billions
10 N I H ^ Total R&D
8 /Defense R&D 6
^/NASA
| f ^ /Other^rf
4
^^^Energy
2
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