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Unpacking R&D in the President’s Budget
President Bush’s final Federal budget for FY 2009 contains significant boosts for physical sciences and programs supported by the Administration’s American Competitiveness Initiative, but proposes flat lining funding for National Institutes of Health, the largest source of funds for life sciences research. Today, the American Association for the Advancement of Science releases its preliminary analysis of R&D in the budget.
The Department of Energy and the National Institute of Standards and Technology saw significant budget increases, especially for respective physical sciences programs; the American Competitiveness Initiative proposes doubling those budgets over ten years, and doing so should be a priority. News outlets focused on science policy have begun to unpack some more of the implications of the Adminstration budget on federally-supported research.
Bush’s boost to the Department of Energy’s Office of Science was welcomed with tempered jubilation among physicists who would now have the money to renew research after cuts made by Congress in the omnibus appropriations for FY2008. According to The New York Times, funding would resume for U.S. contributions to ITER, an international collaboration to build a nuclear fusion reactor; Congress buried the program in appropriations, striking all $160 million of proposed funding. The new budget would restore funding for research at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, but physicists aren’t getting their hopes up because Congress has managed to erase Bush’s increases to physical sciences the past two years.
Science emphasizes the winners vs. losers in the proposed request, reporting that John Marburger, the President’s science advisor, supported flat funding the NIH, arguing that the agency should adopt a private sector approach to efficiently allocating money. Biomedical researchers were quick to disagree. Bob Palazzo, president of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, told the journal: “There is no doubt that the NSF and DOE merit the significant increases the president has proposed. But neglecting NIH at the same time is failing to grasp the interconnectedness of science.”
According to Nature, the fate of Bush’s budget request may go unknown until the next President is in office. They reported that a “wait and see” approach by congressional Democrats could mean another last-minute budget battle. Bush lost the last fight, whose request for doubled physical science spending in 2008 was met by a Congress that instead slashed money to many physical science programs. Congressman Bart Gordon (D-TN), chairman of the House Science Committee, is already drawing lines. He told Nature that the science budget request is “an incomplete and short-sighted plan.”
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