GOVERNMENT & POLICY
INSIGHTS BY DAVID HANSON
CONGRESS GIVES MIXED SUPPORT FOR 2004 R&D Late again on passing spending bills, Congress approves increases despite looming deficit
T
HE SO-CALLED BUDGET PROCESS
in Congress has become an unmitigated mess. For the second year in a row, almost none of the 13 appropriations bills have been passed along for the President's signature, and there appears little hope that they will be finished anytime soon. Congressional leaders are still sparring over whether they canfinishthe appropriations process before leaving Washington, D.C., forThanksgiving, or whether they will have to combine several bills into an omnibus spending bill. However, despite this legislative train wreck, and despite the ever-burgeoning budget deficit, indications are that most science and technology funding for this fiscal year will be at least near what it was last year, and sometimes a little higher. The lone 2004 bill providing significant R&D spending already signed by the President is for the Department of Defense. In total numbers, DOD funding for research, development, and testing will rise to $66.0 billion for fiscal 2004, a 12% jump. This is the fourth straight year of R&D increases at DOD, after many years of flat budgets. But, as it has for the past several years, Congress has decided that the basic research component at DOD is not an especially important function, and it has recommended a $13 million reduction in 2004 to $1.40 billion. While this is better than the President's proposed 8% cut to $1.31 billion, it is still a cut. The other research spending bills are still hungup in the Senate, which is so evenly divided that even minor disagreements erupt into major hassles. The House has passed all the appropriations measures, generally providing funding levels at about what the President requested. But the Senate seems to be slightly increasing a few R&D budgets. An example is 2004 funding for the National Institutes of Health. After double-
digit increases for more thanfiveyears, NIH research was raised only 4% in 2003. For 2004, that increase will be only about 1%. The House measure sets funding at $26.9 billion and the Senate-passed bill, at about $27.3 billion. Bigger differences show up in the support for science at the Department of Commerce. Funding for the National Institute of Standards & Technology would get $368 million from the House, but the Senate has voted for $640 million. Although there would be a good increase for NISTs laboratory programs, the primary reason for the difference is that the House has once again completely zeroed out NISTs Advanced Technology Program, a fairly small, costsharing research effort designed to speed technologies from the research bench to the marketplace. The Senate, on the other hand, doesn't seem to hate this program as much and approved ATP for $222 million in 2004, an actual 45% increase above the 2003 budget. In the past, ATP has ended up with just enough money to keep going, and that is what is likely to happen this year. The most complicated R&D legislation is the Veterans Administration, Housing & Urban Development & Independent Agencies (VA-HUD) bill. It includes R&D funding for the National Science Foundation, the National Aeronautics & Space Administration, and the Environmental Protection Agency And because these research agencies compete with veterans and housing in this bill, science can take a backseat to legislators' priorities. The Senate is trying to put a promised $1.3 billion boost in veterans' health care programs into this year's bill, and it looks like across-the-board cuts to all other programs may have to be imposed to keep the
bill within preset spending limits. The Senate measure already reduces funding from the science budgets, and more cuts, especially from EPA and NASA, could be expected. As it stands now, NSF's budget would rise $136 million to $4.2 billion under the House plan but increase only $45 million under the Senate proposal. NASA would be cut by the Senate by $130 million but would receive a $71 million hike from the House to $11.1 billion. Added to this mix is a NASA request for additional funds to get its space shuttlesflyingagain next year. Congress is also split over EPAresearch. The House has approved a 4% hike to $634 million, but the Senate bill would cut R&D by 6% to $600 million. Of course, all of these numbers could change, especially if the VA-HUD bill is included in an omnibus spending measure. An omnibus bill becomes a great vehicle for members of Congress to add their own amendments changing either funding or policy This is especially true during the House-Senate conference on such a measure, where small changes can be made in order to get individual members to approve the bill. Earmarks to fund specific programs supported by members are easy to add at this point, and with such a large bill with so many provisions, these small changes are probably never seen by most members of Congress. Hanging over much of this year's budget is the record-breaking federal deficit for fiscal 2003. The result of a sluggish economy, reinforced by tax cuts, it seems sure to be even larger in 2004, but Congress seems to have very little concern about this. So while most of the science funding agencies may be getting some small increases for 2004, the outlook for 2005 could be much worse. Continued high deficits are almost always bad for R&D because such discretionary funding is always thefirstto be reduced. And it won't be NIH or science education programs that are cutfirst.Physical sciences, which have not been sufficiently supported for years, are likely to be thefirston the cutting block.
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