Feb. 5

‘Unreal’ Boost for Science?

President Bush’s proposed budget for basic research and development in the 2009 fiscal year seeks a record $147 billion, a 3 percent increase over 2008 that would elevate the physical sciences and engineering, in particular, while keeping funding for the National Institutes of Health flat and scaling back or cutting other domestic programs, including for financial aid.

In an ideal world, Monday’s release of the $3.1 trillion budget for fiscal 2009 would be great news for research universities that perform the bulk of projects funded by the major federal R&D agencies supporting engineering and physical sciences — the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy’s Office of Science and the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Given this year’s budget, which was finalized only in December’s omnibus appropriations bill after a veto threat forced lawmakers to make painful last-minute R&D cuts to stay within reach of President Bush’s declared ceiling, there was an understandable sense of fiscal déj� vu that has some lobbyists wondering whether basic research will share a similar fate next year.

“It’s setting up the same situation that’s happened in the past two years,” said Kei Koizumi, the director of the R&D Budget and Policy Program at the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The big question, he added, is whether this time the president, Congress and research institutions can successfully shepherd the research funding increases into a final budget. Already, national laboratories have found themselves cutting staff, suspending research projects or mandating rolling unpaid leave. The 2009 budget, if passed as is, would fund research facilities such as the National Synchrotron Light Source II, and infrastructure, in addition to basic research.

Tobin Smith, associate vice president for federal relations at the Association of American Universities, called the budget request “unreal” and wondered aloud whether, like last year, efforts on Capitol Hill to rescue programs marked for reduction would squeeze out the president’s more ambitious R&D funding goals. Many of Bush’s proposed increases are concentrated in areas designated as part of the American Competitiveness Initiative, which emphasizes basic research in the physical sciences and engineering tailored to promoting future economic growth.

Through the America COMPETES Act, Congress last year authorized the goals of the competitiveness effort, such as doubling basic research funding levels in the physical sciences, but much of those funds were lost somewhere on the committee room floor during December’s budget wrangling.

“It’s going to be a big challenge, because overall the president once again is requesting a flat, if not declining, total domestic budget, and that is the bottom line under which all of these ACI-related R&D proposals have to fit,” Koizumi said. “So once again ... these are enormous requested increases for the Office of Science and NSF and NIST at the same time as many domestic programs would be cut dramatically or eliminated.”

The omnibus appropriations bill for 2008, for example, funded only a third of the president’s requested increase for the ACI, or $408 million — and more than half of that amount was delivered in the form of noncompetitive earmarks. In principle, universities support the gold standard of competitive, transparent grant programs, although many institutions continue to lobby Congress for specially allocated funds directed to specific research projects.

Last week, in his final State of the Union address, President Bush announced a commitment to reduce the number of earmarks by half — backed up by assurances of a veto — in appropriations bills passed during his last year in office. He also directed federal agencies, beginning in the 2009 fiscal year, to ignore earmarks included in committee reports but not voted on by members of Congress, a move that many advocates against “pork-barrel spending” have suggested would nonetheless be easy to circumvent.

Stressing competitive projects, the proposed budget seeks $12.2 billion for the three ACI agencies, an increase of $1.6 billion, or 15 percent, over the $10.6 billion enacted for 2008. That includes a 13.6 percent increase for the NSF, to $6.85 billion; an 18.8 percent increase for Energy’s Office of Science, to $4.72 billion; and a 21.5 percent boost in funding for NIST’s core research projects, to $634 million. The percentages don’t account for earmarks granted in 2008 — which in some cases were a significant portion of individual budgets — causing the increases to appear greater than might otherwise be expected.

But if research universities were pleased with the budget’s plans for R&D — on paper, at least — they were less sanguine on the topic of biomedical research. President Bush’s proposal requests $29.23 billion for the NIH, the exact amount appropriated for fiscal year 2008. In a statement, the AAU’s president, Robert M. Berdahl, said: “If approved, this will mean that, over six years’ time, NIH’s purchasing power for conducting groundbreaking biomedical research has been cut by one-seventh. We hope Congress will find the means to begin reversing this trend.”

Or, as Massachusetts Institute of Technology president Susan Hockfield put it at the annual meeting of the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities on Monday: “The numbers out today don’t promise any relief in the coming year.”

Selected Agencies in Bush Administration 2009 Science and Technology Budget (in Millions)

Agency	2008 Appropriation	2009 Request	Dollar Change
National Institutes of Health	$29,307	$29,307	$0
Energy Department Office of Science	$3,973	$4,722	+$749
National Science Foundation	$6,032	$6,854	+$822
Defense Department Basic Research	$1,634	$1,699	+$65
National Institute of Standards and Technology Intramural Research/Facilities	$605	$634	+$29
Agriculture Department Research & Extension	$672	$539	-$133

The proposed budget would also slash Medicare payments to hospitals, a prospect that provoked immediate opposition from the Association of American Medical Colleges. In a statement, the organization’s president, Darrell G. Kirch, said: “The nation’s teaching hospitals already face the potential loss of Medicaid payments for graduate medical education, which are vital to training our future physicians. The combined impact of these Medicare and Medicaid cuts would severely hamper the ability of teaching hospitals to educate and train an adequate supply of physicians and avert a serious shortage.”

The Health Resources and Services Administration was also on the receiving end of potential budget cuts, a proposal that would severely scale back the health professions program that supports training and education for health care providers from diverse backgrounds. The 2009 budget seeks $66 million from the program, a decrease of $557 million over last year’s appropriated amount.

The budget also would decrease funding to the Department of Agriculture’s Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service, which disburses resources to land-grant and rural colleges and universities. “We are very concerned about the deep and serious cuts to the education, research and extension programs in the Department of Agriculture,” said Peter McPherson, president of the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges. “This comes at a critical time as institutions are building instructional and research capacity in areas such as energy, food safety and natural resources stewardship, which the budget proposal erodes.”

One increase that surprised some observers was the proposed $1.7 billion for Department of Defense basic research, $270 million over last year’s request. Koizumi called it “a very significant boost and what many people regard as a long-overdue recognition of the key role that the Department of Defense plays in the physical sciences.” One factor that may have played a role, he suggested, was that the new secretary of defense, Robert Gates, was formerly the president of Texas A&M University, a prominent recipient of defense funding.

The budget also expands the National Nanotechnology Initiative, which spans several agencies and focuses on applications of the developing technologies to medicine, manufacturing and other fields. Its funding request for 2009 is $1.53 billion, over this year’s enacted $1.49 billion.

— Andy Guess

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Comments

Very accurate (and unfortunate) assessment of the fate of basic science research under this administration. All the more reason to put science on the ballot here in primary season. Barack Obama has a very clear and unabashedly pro-basic science research position that is solidified in numbers (double or nothing?) In contrast, Ms. Clinton proposes increasing “basic research budgets 50% over 10 years” (from hillaryclinton.com)

Learn more about Senator Obama’s strong science and technology positions below.

http://election2008.aaas.org/comparisons/obama.shtml

http://www.barackobama.com/issues/technology/#improve-competitiveness

Hill Staffer, at 3:20 pm EST on February 5, 2008

“Hill Staffer” May Not Have Read The Article

Seems to me that “Hill Staffer” misrepresents the content of the proposed budget or possibly did not read the article before writing a response. ‘Unreal Boost’ describes a RECORD budget that roughly keeps pace with inflation and emphasizes “basic science research” in engineering and the physical sciences. As for the incredible budget promises attributed to Mr. Obama and Mr. Clinton’s wife, they are political promises which are not quite worth their weight in air. This bird in the hand is worth two against Bush.

Scrawed, at 4:30 pm EST on February 6, 2008

Scrawed should learn the connotation of the word “unreal”

Ideally, this “would be great news.” As Mr. Koizumi and Mr. Guess astutely point out, we’re experiencing deja vu. Why? Well, when push comes to shove (and we risk not funding ourselves) basic science will get the axe, because we have to stay under Mr. Bush’s imposed ceiling while respecting his crystal clear order of priorities. Additionally, most of the increases in basic science research are funneled through his “American Competitiveness Initiative” which focuses on “promoting economic growth.” This is clearly a distant objective in the minds of our target grant-writers.

Scrawed, here are a couple of tips for the future:

1) Truth in politics can only be deciphered by reading between the lines.2) Please, don’t try to seek employment with a lobbying firm anytime soon.

Hill Staffer, at 5:25 pm EST on February 6, 2008

a few more details, please?

Many thanks to Hill Staffer for pointing out Obama’s promises for doubling funding for basic research and comparing them with Clinton’s promise to increase funding 50% over 10 years. Obama’s pledge sounds great, but it suffers for lack of detail, even on his website. At least with Clinton’s promise we have a timeline and other specifics, some of which are simply not good enough (c’mon, HRC — even 42 aimed to double NSF and DOE’s Offc of Sci within 10 years!). Obama’s pledge is vague as can be... Double in how long? Which agencies? Does NIH fit in here? Answers — I need ANSWERS before next Tuesday!

potomac primary undecided, at 9:10 pm EST on February 6, 2008

Calling “Hill Staffer’s” Bluff

“Hill Staffer” claimed this article was a “Very accurate (and unfortunate) assessment of the fate of basic science research under this administration.” I am deeply grateful for “Hill Staffer’s” assertions, because it prompted me to look again at the Bush record on R&D funding.

I found the following article ("AAAS Preliminary Analysis of R&D in the FY 2008 Budget February 7, 2007″)to be particularly instructive:

http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd/prel08p.htm

According to this article total federal R&D for the US under Bush has been at historic record highs, every year of his administration, and has usually hovered anywhere from 20-40% higher — than any year prior to his administration going back to at least 1976 in inflation-adjusted dollars (see Figure 2 of the article cited above).

As a percentage of GDP his record has fared less well, but federal R&D as a percentage of GDP was still higher under each year of the Bush administration than ANY given year of the Clinton administration (see Figure 4, also from the posted link).

Some of the large agencies facing freezes or cutbacks currently (particularly NIH, the Department of Agriculture, and the DoD) were beneficiaries of dramatic budget increases during the first four years of the Bush administration (Figure 5 from the posted link tells the story rather succinctly as do other articles on R&D budgets from 2002-2004 in rather greater detail).

See also “Bush Proposes Record R&D Budget,” David Hanson, CENEAR (Chemical and Engineering News) 80 6 p. 5; “Bush FY 2003 R&D budget increases would go mostly to DOD, NIH” Issues in Science and Technology, Spring 2002; and see “FY R&D Federal Budget Facts” for various years 2001-2007.

We have absolutely no reason to believe that Mrs. Clinton’s R&D budgets will reflect anything other than the performance of her husband in federal R&D from 1993-2000. As for Obama, he’s as yet an unproven quantity regardless of any merit his proposals might have. I for one would not rate their as-yet unfulfilled election-year promises over the Bush administration’s actual performance in federal R&D outlays over the last 8 years.

And as for “Hill Staffer” — every animal in the corral — even the jackass — should know the difference between a full trough and an empty one.

Scrawed, at 6:05 pm EST on February 8, 2008

A pig in the corral?

Wow — Scrawed might want to take a step into the 20th century, not to mention the 21st... He indicates , “We have absolutely no reason to believe that Mrs. Clinton’s R&D budgets will reflect anything other than the performance of her husband...” Last time I checked these were two separate people, with Mrs. Clinton proposing some different ideas than Mr. Clinton promoted during his years in office. And both she and Mr Obama seem capable of learning from the mistakes of the last 8 years. Hopefully they would both outpace GW’s anemic funding levels for BASIC research. Scrawed thinks he’s got something when he talks about the entire R&D budget, but take a moment to scratch the surface and even a turkey can figure out that most of that funding is for DOD development (not basic research), i.e. corportate welfare for the big defense contractors.

ppd, at 6:40 pm EST on February 10, 2008

PPD May Stand For Piss-Poor Discourse

“ppd” is wrong on several counts. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) are the biggest collective beneficiary of the FY 2008 R&D budget — not the DoD as “ppd” inaccurately claims. This has been true of US R&D budgets over the past 20 or so years.

As far as “GW’s anemic funding levels for basic research,” this is simply not borne out by the AAAS article to which I provided a link! Indeed, it’s clear that there are winners and losers by focus area. One of the biggest losers is DoD S&T funding (down 20% from last year’s budget). One of the biggest winners is DOE funding for “basic research” (the article’s assertion) and renewable energy research. Here’s the AAAS article:

http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd/prel08p.htm

Total federal support of research is down from its peak in 2004. It is still higher by about $15 billion or so in constant dollars than any given year under Clinton (see Figure 2 from the link). Clinton reduced total federal R&D to close to 0.8% of GDP during his eight years — Bush brought it back up over 1.0% (see Figure 4).

I have no doubt that Mrs. Clinton has a mind of her own. However, it’s a reasonable assumption that she and Bill shared and continue to share some opinions on policy! Given Bill’s R&D record, is this a risk that you REALLY want to run?

Scrawed, at 6:25 am EST on February 11, 2008