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10.11

Key Federal R&D Appropriations Take Shape for 2012

By IEEE-USA Staff

With Fiscal Year 2012 beginning on 1 October, both the House and Senate Appropriations Committees have completed work on proposed FY 2012 budgets for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).  The result has overall funding levels declining at all three S&T agencies, although there is an effort to minimize the impact on the R&D components of the agency budgets.

Highlights by agency follow:

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)

The U.S. space program fares better in the Senate proposal, which provides $17.9 billion to support NASA operations, a decrease of 2.8 percent.  The House version would cut overall NASA funding from FY 2011 levels by 8.9 percent to $16.8B.

The two proposals also suggest differing R&D priorities between the House and the Senate.  The Senate bill slates NASA science programs for a 3.3 percent increase, compared to a 10.2 percent decrease in the House measure.   The House would also cut aeronautics-related research by 42.5 percent to $301M, which is on par with a 49.5 percent cut proposed in the Senate.  Senate appropriators also proposed $637M in funding for NASA”s new space technology R&D effort, compared to only $375M in the House.  This program will seek to fund basic research that can advance multi-purpose technologies to enable new approaches to NASA’s current missions, and includes NASA’s commitments to the federal Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business  Technology Transfer (STTR) programs.

Senate appropriators provide $3.78B for NASA’s exploration program, a decrease of only 0.7 percent from FY 2011 levels.  That includes $1.8B for Space Launch Systems focused on development of a new heavy lift launch vehicle. 

According to Senate appropriators: “For our next stage of space exploration, the United States will need to engage its partners to have a truly robust and successful program. With the funds provided here, the United States will be able to contribute heavy lift launch technology, including the capability to launch humans beyond low Earth orbit, to that effort.”

The House bill provides $3.65B for space exploration, but would increase the share allocated for Space Launch Systems to $1.95B.

Senate appropriators also provides full funding for the James Webb Space Telescope, noting that “ JWST will be 100 times more powerful than the Hubble Space Telescope and  is poised to rewrite the physics books.”

By contrast, the House appropriators propose de-funding the Webb Space Telescope due to “chronic and deeply rooted management problems “ so as to set “a cost discipline example for other projects and by relieving the enormous pressure that JWST was placing on NASA’s ability to pursue other science missions.”

National Science Foundation (NSF)

House Appropriators propose growth of $43M in NSF’s research and related activities over FY 2011 levels, a 1 percent increase, compared to a 2.2 percent cut recommended by the Senate.  The House urged NSF to use these new funds combined with funds saved through other reductions and terminations in order to give priority support to “cybersecurity and cyberinfrastructure improvements; advanced manufacturing; materials research; and disciplinary and interdisciplinary research in the natural and physical sciences, math and engineering.”

Both the House and Senate Appropriators accepted NSF’s proposals for $55M program reductions and terminations, including the Deep Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory, Graduate STEM Fellows in K–12 Education, National STEM Distributed Learning (Digital Library), Research Initiation to Broaden Participation in Biology, the Synchrotron Radiation Center, and Science of Learning Centers.

NSF funding for major research equipment and facilities is held flat at $117M in the Senate proposal and declines 14.6 percent in the House proposal.

The House bill report also notes that “Government policy on the dissemination of scientific research data has trended consistently toward increased public access. This has numerous benefits and advantages, but also raises concerns about: (1) researchers' ability to effectively retain their intellectual property rights for potentially lucrative findings; and (2) the government's ability to protect scientific intellectual property that has significant economic or security implications.”  NSF is directed to provide Congress with a report within 120 days of legislative enactment on proactive steps that can be taken by the government and within the scientific research community to better balance the imperatives of public access and protection of data.

National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)

Both the House and Senate are proposing cuts to the NIST budget over FY 2011 levels, with both proposals falling well short of the President’s requests to support new initiatives around emerging standards, measurements and innovation programs.  The House appropriation would cut NIST’s budget from FY 2011 levels by $49.3M or 6.7 percent, compared to a $70M or a 9.3 percent cut by the Senate.

The standards and measurements programs that comprise NIST’s Scientific and Technology Research and Services would grow $10M (2 percent) in the House proposal versus a $7M cut (1.4 percent) in the Senate version.  However, substantial increases requested for new program initiatives were left unfunded, including a $43.4M request for development and promulgation of new cyber security standards.

The budget constraints prompted the House appropriators to express some concerns that it couldn’t do better for NIST’s lab programs, “The reduction will render NIST unable to fund an array of planned new initiatives designed to bolster research in critical areas and to promote proven services to strengthen U.S. manufacturing in high-value-added product markets.

NIST’s Industrial Technology Services (ITS) are targeted for significant cuts in both the House and Senate bills, including termination of the NIST Technology Innovation Program and the Baldrige Performance Excellence Program.  Within ITS, NIST’s proposed new Advanced Manufacturing Technology Consortia program was left unfunded, as well as a proposal for a new Public Safety Innovation Fund.  All that remains of ITS is the Hollings Manufacturing Extension Partnership Program, which is cut from $173M in FY2011 to $128M in the House bill and $120M in the Senate bill.

Despite the overall cuts, the R&D components of NIST’s budget actually grow by $103M (19 percent) in the House version and $92M (17 percent) in the Senate version over FY2011 levels.

Closing Note

Both measures are still pending action by the full House and Senate, after which significant differences in the bills will require a joint conference to reconcile the funding proposals.  There is also talk of wrapping these and other appropriations measures into a combined “omnibus” bill to streamline the approval process for the FY 2012 federal budget.  With the FY 2012 budget year beginning on October 1, prospects are high for a continuing resolution or series of resolutions to keep these and other government agencies in operation.

These proposed cuts, on top of the previous FY 2011 budget roll-back to pre-stimulus FY2009 funding levels, reflect the lean times currently facing most federal science and technology programs.  The budget doubling goals originally set in the America COMPETES Act in 2007 for NSF and NIST now seem like a distant memory.

Constrained by the need to reduce federal spending, appropriators in both the House and Senate expressed some worry at the impacts of their proposed budget cuts, with the Senate appropriations report noting “these are regrettable reductions that will result in real consequences.”

Comments may be submitted to todaysengineer@ieee.org.