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Environment

2007 R&D Budget Lacks Balance

Sizable funding increases in a number of research areas are negated by cuts in other programs

by Lois R. Ember, David J. Hanson, Glenn Hess, Bette Hileman, Jeff Johhson, And Susan Morrissey
February 20, 2006 | A version of this story appeared in Volume 84, Issue 8

Research and development funding proposed in President George W. Bush's federal budget for fiscal 2007 is somewhat of a change from his previous submissions. Instead of simply focusing on defense and homeland security spending, there is a conscious effort to improve R&D at several research agencies and to hold back spending at a number of others. The outcome is an uneven patchwork of funding changes in civilian R&D that results in a very small overall increase.

As previewed in his State of the Union address, Bush has proposed increases in physical sciences funding at several agencies, notably the National Science Foundation, National Institute for Standards & Technology, and Department of Energy. These increases, however, are offset by reductions in science and technology spending at the Departments of Defense, Agriculture, and Commerce and by proposing no increase at the National Institutes of Health.

The Administration claims that much of the budget trimming comes from eliminating approximately $2.4 billion worth of R&D earmarks added to last year's budget by members of Congress. For example, the proposed budget for medical research at Defense is cut for 2007, because the Administration says that $900 million in projects was inappropriately added in 2006. USDA's R&D budget would also be cut by 16%, primarily because of the elimination of earmarks.

Congress faces this budget with some trepidation. Bush has asked for budget cuts in a number of politically sensitive areas, such as veterans' benefits, Medicare spending, and education programs. Because R&D funding is a purely discretionary item in the budget, it is always in danger of further reductions. Science Committee Chairman Sherwood L. Boehlert (R-N.Y.), whose committee held the first hearings on the R&D proposal last week, said he is generally pleased with the effort to boost physical science, but he has concerns about cuts in research at the National Aeronautics & Space Administration and about insufficient spending on science education.

The following review of proposed R&D budgets at federal agencies comes with some caveats. The numbers given are mostly budget obligations, that is, the money that agencies can contract to spend during the fiscal year. This may be more or less than the agencies actually spend, or outlay, during the year. Also, the federal budget is a complicated document with various ways of adding up programs and getting totals. As a result, sometimes agency or department figures and totals from the White House Office of Management & Budget (OMB) are not the same and can be published in different places as different amounts. These variations are usually small and reflect alternative methods of dividing up funds.

NSF. One of the bright spots in this year's federal R&D budget is the request for NSF. As a result of the President's American Competitiveness Initiative, the foundation's budget is set to grow to $6.0 billion in 2007, up about 8% from 2006. This increase sets NSF on a path to double its budget in 10 years.

NSF will invest its budget among four priorities: advancing the frontier through its grant programs, funding top-notch facilities and infrastructure, broadening participation in science and engineering, and supporting education.

In the area of "advancing the frontier"-the agency's term for its grant programs-the 2007 request will increase the foundation's investment to $4.7 billion, up 7.7% from the 2006 level. Some of the programs targeted to benefit from this increased funding include interdisciplinary nanoscale research, international polar year, and elementary particle physics. Investments in federal-wide initiatives such as the National Nanotechnology Initiative, U.S. Climate Change Science Program, and homeland security activities are also slated to increase in 2007.

The increase in funding would allow the number of competitive grants to grow by about 550 to a total expected number of 10,310 in 2007. A similar gain is projected in the total number of research grants, bringing the expected number of these grants up to 6,760. The average size of the awards would grow slightly to $148,300, while the duration would remain three years.

To support cutting-edge research, the President is requesting an increase in facilities and infrastructure program funds. The 2007 budget proposal for major research equipment and facility construction is set at $241 million and would support two new programs: the Alaska Region Research Vessel and the Ocean Observatories Initiative. In addition, about $597 million would be invested agencywide in cyberinfrastructure to help support progress toward pentascale computing.

The foundation would also increase its investments in broadening participation in science and engineering to $640 million in 2007. An increase of $16.2 million would be shared among the Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority Participation, the Alliances for Graduate Education & the Professoriate, and the Centers of Research Excellence in Science & Technology. The Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) would also see growth, bringing the total support to almost $100 million.

Investments in education would also be increased. For example, the Discovery Research K-12 program, designed to strengthen K-12 science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education, has a 2007 requested funding level of $104 million. And the Graduate Teaching Fellowships in K-12 Education program would be increased by nearly 10% to $55.7 million.

Within the Mathematical & Physical Sciences Directorate, the requested growth of 6.0% would bring the budget for 2007 up to $1.2 billion. All of MPS's divisions would share in the funding growth, with materials research leading the other divisions in overall funding with a budget request for 2007 of $258 million. Chemistry, which has the smallest overall budget of the MPS science divisions, is slated to be funded at $191 million, up 5.7%.

MPS highlights include a $14.9 million funding increase for nanoscale science, $9.4 million for molecular-basis-of-life activities, and $8.5 million for broadening participation and education/workforce activities. The directorate would also slightly increase the number of competitive awards and research grants by 50 each to 2,150 and 1,650, respectively, in 2007. The average award size would increase by 3.7% to $140,000 with an average duration held flat at 3.1 years.

NIH. The 2007 budget request for NIH holds the agency's overall funding flat at $28.5 billion. Likewise, funding for institutes and centers would remain essentially flat, with all but two at a zero increase or at a slight reduction.

The only significant increase within the agency would be in the Office of the Director, where the funding request is up 26.5% over 2006 levels to $668 million. This funding would increase the NIH Director's Discretionary Fund by $29 million to $111 million. The increased funding would also support a $110 million increase in biodefense countermeasures, for a total investment of $160 million, and a $1 million increase to the Office of Portfolio Analysis & Strategic Initiatives.

The trans-NIH Roadmap will remain a priority in 2007. The proposed budget requests $443 million for the program, which represents an increase of $113 million over the 2006 levels. The Director's Discretionary Fund would contribute its $111 million to the 2007 NIH Roadmap budget. The institutes and centers would cover the remaining funds through a 1.2% contribution taken off the top of each individual institute's and center's budget.

Composed of 28 transagency initiatives, the NIH Roadmap is split into three themes: new pathways to discovery, budgeted at $181 million; multidisciplinary research teams of the future, at $81 million; and reengineering the clinical research enterprise, at $181 million.

A new priority at the agency is the recently announced Genes & Environment Initiative, for which $68 million is being requested (C&EN, Feb. 13, page 62). And the recently announced Pathway to Independence program is targeted to receive $15 million to encourage young researchers (C&EN, Feb. 6, page 19).

Although the budget would remain flat, the number of competitive research project grants issued by NIH is projected to grow by 275 grants over the number awarded in 2006, bringing the total number to 9,337, representing an investment in 2007 of $3.3 billion.

DEFENSE. The Administration's request for R&D at the Department of Defense constitutes 53% of all R&D funding for 2007. At $73.2 billion, the research, development, testing, and evaluation budget for DOD dwarfs the research spending at other agencies. Although the lion's share of this goes to development of big weapons systems, $5.9 billion goes to basic and applied research.

The Administration is continuing its efforts to cut research funds at DOD. This year's proposal would trim basic and applied research by more than $700 million, similar to the request for fiscal 2006. Congress, however, has been adding some funds back to these categories, usually in the form of earmarks, which the Administration has vowed to eliminate.

Specific areas of R&D highlighted in the President's request include continuing investment in new materials for personal body armor, development of lightweight communications devices, nonlethal weapons, sensors of all kinds, and new simulation systems for combat training. DOD is also developing vaccines to protect against biological weapons and better countermeasures against a chemical weapons attack. It is also involved in surveillance systems to monitor the spread of avian influenza.

For specific programs, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency would get an 11% increase to $3.3 billion; this includes increases in its basic research program, which has been cut for 2006. The Missile Defense Agency-the "Star Wars" program-would rise to a record level of $9.3 billion. However, medical research at DOD would be cut substantially from $21.5 million to just $8.7 million, and the Chemical & Biological Defense Program would be reduced 9% to $959 million.

HOMELAND SECURITY. The President's fiscal 2007 budget calls for $41.6 billion in nondefense homeland security spending, up 8% from the previous year's $38.5 billion. The increased funding would support homeland-security-related activities of 31 nondefense agencies, but the lion's share-$27.8 billion or 67%-is slated for Department of Homeland Security (DHS) programs.

The $27.8 billion for DHS excludes programs the department doesn't consider to be directly related to homeland security and is 8% greater than 2006 funding. Included in this total is $10 million for a new chemical security office that would develop best practices and standards to improve security at chemical facilities.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), chairman of the Senate Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Committee, applauds the creation of the new DHS office. She and other senators recently introduced legislation that would authorize DHS to establish performance-based standards to enhance security at those chemical plants posing the greatest risks.

With a nod to the dangers combat troops face daily from improvised explosive devices and the possibility that terrorists may use IEDs on U.S. soil, the 2007 budget proposal provides NSF with $20 million in R&D funding to address the threat. DHS receives $86.5 million to research explosives countermeasures.

A large chunk of the budget's support for research into the development of countermeasures against biological, chemical, and radiological threats would go to the Department of Health & Human Services. Within HHS, the National Institute of Allergy & Infectious Diseases' biodefense research programs would receive $1.89 billion, of which $160 million would support advanced development of medical countermeasures.

An interagency collaboration among USDA, HHS, and DHS is designed to beef up defenses against threats to agriculture and the nation's food supply. The 2007 budget request allocates $540 million for this effort.

The Environmental Protection Agency, charged with securing U.S. drinking water resources, is slated to receive $94 million. This funding would support R&D on monitoring and surveillance devices for threat agents and enhancing the agency's decontamination capabilities.

Across the government, fiscal 2007 spending for homeland-security-related R&D, including Pentagon programs, would total $5.2 billion, up a mere 0.5% over the previous year. Even DHS's R&D portfolio, which has increased every year since the department's formation, is slated for a cut, although budget documents say otherwise. This decline in R&D funding comes as overall spending at DHS is climbing.

According to the budget books, R&D at DHS is slated to increase 2%, from $1.48 billion in fiscal 2006 to $1.51 billion in fiscal 2007. But, an American Association for the Advancement of Science budget expert, Kei Koizumi, has drilled deeply into supporting documents and has discovered that 2007 R&D funding would actually fall 5.6% to $1.31 billion. He says the official 2% increase in R&D funding erroneously includes money for the Federal Emergency Management Agency's flood control program.

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One DHS research program that beats the odds is the Domestic Nuclear Detection Office, which was created last year to coordinate U.S. nuclear detection efforts. DNDO's overall fiscal 2007 spending is pegged at $536 million, a 70% increase over the previous year's. Included in the $536 million request is a $100 million effort to develop and deploy technology to detect, identify, and trace the origins of nuclear and radiological materials.

Losing ground from last year's funding would be R&D spending for biological countermeasures, down 10% to $337 million. Funding for research to develop chemical countermeasures also would drop 12% to $83 million.

ENERGY. Funding increases proposed for the Department of Energy for fiscal 2007 could be a bonanza for scientists. Chief among programs benefiting from the Administration's largesse is DOE's Office of Science, proposed for a jump of $506 million, or 14%, over last year's appropriation.

The increase would take the science office's funding to $4.1 billion. And the Administration's plan is to increase funding to some $7.2 billion in 10 years, which Office of Science Director Raymond L. Orbach called an "historic opportunity" for a "renaissance" in U.S. science and global competitiveness.

This was the first budget prepared by Energy Secretary Samuel W. Bodman, a former chemical engineering professor and chemical company chief executive officer. Bodman echoed the energy emphasis in the President's State of the Union address in which the President proposed a 22% increase in "clean energy research." The President's clean energy definition was broad, however, and included nuclear and coal as well as wind, solar, and renewable energy sources.

The DOE proposal would increase research in solar energy and biofuels by about $60 million each, bringing each to about $150 million, 70% more than current funding. In contrast, the department's R&D efforts to support coal-generated energy would be cut by $46 million. At $330 million, however, coal research funding would still exceed solar and biofuels combined. Nuclear spending would increase by 18% to $632 million, more than half for R&D, which increased by 50%.

At $23.6 billion, the DOE proposed budget is flat compared with last year's congressional appropriation, so to fund new energy programs the Administration proposes several deep cuts. Largest are $750 million in reductions to the environmental cleanup budget, $200 million in mostly R&D cuts to the fossil energy program, and nearly $100 million removed from programs to encourage installation of conservation and energy efficiency technologies in homes and businesses. These programs are popular with many members of Congress, states, communities, and industries, however, and are unlikely to be reduced without a fight.

Concerning Office of Science programs of particular interest to the chemical sciences, Basic Energy Sciences (BES) is proposed to receive 25% in new funding, bringing its total to $1.4 billion.

Proposed increases include $51 million in new nanoscale science research funds, for a $253 million total. The BES budget also includes funds to complete the last of five nanoscale research centers in 2007. Brookhaven would join operating nanoscale research centers at Argonne, Lawrence Berkeley, Oak Ridge, and Sandia/Los Alamos National Laboratories, DOE said.

BES proposed funding also includes $100 million in operational funds for the Spallation Neutron Source at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and $105 million for engineering and construction at Stanford University's Linac Coherent Light Source.

Wording in BES's budget proposal also urges its "communities of scientists" to propose research to overcome short-term "showstoppers" in nuclear, solar, and hydrogen energy technologies. The budget proposes $34 million in new funding for solar projects, $12 million in new nuclear R&D funds, and an increase in hydrogen-related R&D dollars of $18 million.

Another Office of Science program of particular interest to chemists is the Biological & Environmental Research program. The budget appears to shrink, but that is because the Administration's proposal has deleted $129 million in congressionally specified projects or earmarks that are in the 2006 appropriation. Funding for the BER base program, without the earmarks, would increase by $59 million to $510 million in 2007.

New funds would be directed to the imaging and characterization of microbial communities in energy and environmental applications, including hydrogen and ethanol applications. BER also continues a history of human genome research ($75 million) and climate- change science ($135 million). Other BER R&D areas are smaller, and their proposed budgets are similar to previous years'.

Most of this year's DOE budget presentation was devoted to a far-reaching program that would overhaul the U.S.'s and world's nuclear energy regime. Called the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, the $250 million proposal would encourage nuclear power use in the U.S. and throughout the world. The focus is largely on R&D to develop the technology to establish an international system to reprocess nuclear fuel-research to improve fuel-recycling technologies as well as to develop advanced burner reactors to better use reprocessed fuel.

NASA. The 2007 budget request for NASA shows the President's continuing commitment to the Vision for Space Exploration, which was rolled out two years ago and targets a return of humans to the moon before continuing on to Mars. The request sets the agency's 2007 budget at $16.8 billion, up 3% over the 2006. To effectively use this funding, NASA plans to focus support on programs in line with the vision's goals.

Among NASA's continuing priorities will be returning the space shuttle to flight and completing and maintaining the International Space Station (ISS). The 2007 request provides $4.1 billion, down more than 8% from the 2006 level, to returning the shuttles to flight and activities associated with phasing out the shuttle by 2010. The ISS budget, on the other hand, is slated for a 3% increase in 2007 to $1.8 billion to fund construction and transportation activities.

Funding for research to support new space vehicle development and human safety in space within the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate would rise next year. Activities related to crew exploration, vehicle development, and other transportation programs are requested to receive a 76% increase to $3.1 billion in the 2007 budget. Programs related to research and technology-such as development of a liquid oxygen-methane propulsion system or ablative thermal protection systems for next-generation vehicles-are funded at $626 million in the 2007 request, up 7% from 2006. And the request for activities to study the effects of space on human health and other human safety issues is up 56% to $275 million.

Small but positive growth is proposed in other science and education areas at NASA, with the exception of aeronautics, which is reorganizing its research functions. Programs dealing with the science of Earth, the solar system, and the universe are budgeted for 1.5% growth to $5.3 billion in the 2007 request. For aeronautics research, funding in 2007 would be cut by about 18% to $724 million.

COMMERCE. The 2007 budgets for both of the Commerce Department's primary science agencies-NIST and the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration-are slated for decreases over their 2006 levels. Requests for R&D funding levels for NIST and some NOAA programs, however, are up.

The President's budget request for NIST, which will play a key role in the President's American Competitiveness Initiative, seeks an increase of nearly 19% in laboratory research, bringing the total investment in this area for 2007 to just shy of $460 million. This increase in funding would be used to support major initiatives in areas such as neutron research, nanotechnology, hydrogen economy, and bioimaging.

Balancing the increases in NIST's laboratory research programs are cuts to the institute's Advanced Technology Program and Hollings Manufacturing Extension Partnership. The President has zeroed out the ATP program and cut in half the funding for HMEP in the 2007 request.

For NOAA, the President requested $3.7 billion, 5.8% below the 2006 appropriations. But it's not all bad news, as several R&D priorities at NOAA would see some growth. These include ecosystem management, up $107 million; climate services, up $24.1 million; weather and water information, up $46.1 million; commerce and transportation, up $19.5 million; and people and infrastructure (including satellite development), up $148 million.

USDA. Once again, USDA's research budget request is much lower than the previous year's funding. It would fall 16.5% from $2.41 billion estimated for fiscal 2006 to $2.01 billion proposed for fiscal 2007.

At USDA's R&D agencies, the budget for the Agricultural Research Service would experience the sharpest decline, falling $261 million, or 20%, from $1.3 billion in 2006 to $1.0 billion in 2007. ARS conducts most of the department's in-house research in natural and biological sciences.

Savings in ARS's budget would be achieved largely through eliminating congressional earmarks worth $146 million in the 2006 budget and by terminating other projects funded at $50 million.

An increase of $40 million is sought for ARS research on controlling exotic and emerging diseases of crops and livestock, such as avian influenza and bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease. In addition, a boost of $9.9 million is sought for vaccines to control emerging diseases, such as avian flu. And an increase of $4.2 million is requested for the National Plant Disease Recovery System, which develops resistant varieties to be used during disease outbreak.

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The budget proposes $3.6 million to enhance a program to convert crops and crop residues to biofuels, such as ethanol and diesel fuel, and other high-value products.

The budget for the Cooperative State Research, Education & Extension Service would decline $161 million, or 13%, from an estimated $1.21 billion in 2006 to $1.05 billion. CSREES supports projects conducted in partnership with the State Agricultural Experiment Stations, State Cooperative Extension Systems, land grant universities, colleges, and other research institutions. The CSREES budget declines primarily because earmarked projects funded at $196 million in 2006 would be zeroed out in the 2007 proposal.

In contrast, USDA's primary competitive research grants program, the National Research Initiative, would receive an increase of $67 million. This program funds research in agricultural genomics, food safety, plant biotechnology, and water security.

The request for Forest & Rangeland Research is $268 million, a decline of 4% from $279 million in 2006.

It is likely that USDA's total R&D budget will decrease much less than the proposed 16% because the majority of cuts come from zeroing out earmarks in the 2006 budget. Congress is unlikely to deviate from its usual practice of restoring earmark projects.

EPA. President Bush is proposing a $7.32 billion budget for EPA in fiscal 2007, a cut of more than $300 million from its current $7.65 billion level. "While our nation is at war, EPA is tightening our belts while maintaining our commitments to the American people," said EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson. Nevertheless, the budget "fulfills every presidential environmental commitment and maintains the goals laid out in EPA's strategic plan, while spending less," he added.

Despite the proposed cutbacks, funding for the agency's science and technology activities, including Superfund transfers, would increase 8% in fiscal 2007 to about $788 million.

Johnson said the administration's 2007 budget request for research includes $15 million in funding for the agency's computational toxicology program, which seeks to provide tools to conduct more rapid risk assessments and improve the identification of chemicals for testing that may be of greatest risk. The EPA chief said the research program would focus on four key areas in the new fiscal year: information technology, chemical prioritization tools, systems biology models, and cumulative risk assessment.

EPA is also asking Congress to provide $4 million in additional support, for a total of $8.6 million, to study the impacts of manufactured nanomaterials on human health and the environment as well as nanotechnology's potential beneficial uses.

The proposed budget also would spend $7 million for a water infrastructure research initiative to generate the science and engineering needed to evaluate new technologies to reduce the cost of operating and replacing aging and failing systems for drinking water and wastewater treatment.

In addition, the agency is asking Congress to provide $8.9 million for its Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS), an Internet database of information on the potential human health effects of environmental substances.

THE BUDGET PROCESS. The fiscal 2007 budget now goes to the House and Senate Appropriations Committees, where it is divided into several appropriations bills. Hearings will be held on each bill by various committees, and legislation will emerge that sets the levels of spending for all federal departments and agencies. The numbers approved by Congress may be very different from those originally proposed by the Administration, but historically, R&D has not been radically changed. The whole process is supposed to be completed and the bills signed by the President by Sept. 30, the last day of fiscal 2006.

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