2007 Budget Gets Scrooged

Democratic party leaders have proposed freezing most agency budgets at 2006 levels for the rest of fiscal 2007. Their plan is to pass a continuing resolution on federal spending that lasts until the fiscal year expires on Sept. 30, 2007.

Federal research funding agencies such as the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health would end up operating for the rest of fiscal 2007 with the same amount of money they had for 2006.

The plan was put forth by Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.) and Rep. David Obey (D-Wis.), incoming chairmen of the Senate and House Appropriations Committees. They are taking this step, they said, because only two of the 11 appropriations bills for fiscal 2007 were passed by the last Congress, and they are looking for a way to "clear the decks quickly" so they can move on to the 2008 budget proposal, to be submitted in February.

The plan has the approval of newly designated House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and future Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.).

Byrd and Obey said they will try to make only limited adjustments to the budget to address important policy concerns. They also said there would be no congressional earmarks—funding designated to a specific project by an individual member—in the joint funding resolution they would pass.

Lost under this plan would be the large increases that seemed in store for physical sciences funding at three research agencies under President George W. Bush's American Competitiveness Initiative. NSF was slated for an 8% increase in research funds, the Energy Department's Office of Science was to get a 14% boost, and funding for the lab programs at the National Institute for Standards & Technology was to rise nearly 24%. None of these increases would happen under the continuing resolution plan.

Otherwise, the effect on science agencies would be mixed. Kei Koizumi, director of the R&D Budget & Policy Program for the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a longtime analyst of federal science spending, pointed out that not all agencies were set to get increases in fiscal 2007.

"The President had proposed some cuts in R&D budgets, for example at the Departments of Agriculture and Commerce and the Environmental Protection Agency," Koizumi said. "The continuing resolution would actually lock in better funding for these agencies."

Congress typically burdens many science agencies with earmarks that reduce the agencies' effective R&D spending, Koizumi noted. If a continuing resolution can be passed without any earmarks, the funds that would have gone to them will be available to spend on agency R&D programs. The lack of earmarks would effectively increase some R&D budgets.

It is possible that the competitiveness initiative program would be on the short list eligible for "adjustments," Koizumi added, but not likely. These changes most likely will go to big-ticket policy items such as increases for the Veterans Affairs Department's medical programs. "Whether any science-related programs will be able to rise to the level of a special case is really up in the air," he said.