By Henry Kelly, Ph.D.
The administration’s own budget document shows an absolute decline in Science and Technology funding and proposes cutting energy research by nearly 11% and energy efficiency and renewable energy research programs by nearly 17% after an adjustment for inflation. The most authoritative R&D budget analysis available, the AAAS R&D Budget and Policy Program, summarized the FY2009 budget with a headline saying “2009 Budget Proposes Physical Sciences and Development Increases, Flat Funding for Biomedical Research” even though OMB’s own summary of the Federal Science and Technology budget shows a net decline even without adjusting for inflation.

Funny Numbers:
A large part of the confusion comes from the way earmarks are considered. Having presided over the largest increase in research earmarks in history while Republicans controlled both houses of Congress, the administration is suddenly using a war against earmarks as a backdoor way to cut research. Here’s how it works. Last year the president’s budget was well below what the Congress wanted in areas like energy conservation and health research. They added funding to these areas but many of the additions were in the form of earmarks - funds aimed at a specific recipient. But when the president considers the “baseline budget” which is used to compute increases, these earmarks additions are removed. Thus research areas where the total funding is actually cut show up as small increases (increases above the budget minus earmarks).
The administration’s accounts presume that spending on earmarks is the functional equivalent of dumping the money into the ocean. While there are obviously absurd uses of the funds, in fact over 83% of the funds are directed to the nation’s top 100 research universities. While these institutions are fully capable of doing shoddy work, internal quality standards ensure that the funds are not all spent on beer. There’s some evidence that earmarked funds result in research that is not cited as frequently as papers produced from peer reviewed research, the difference is not enormous. Agency managers, always talking “off the record”, report that they are often able to negotiate with members of Congress and redirect the earmarked funds to higher priority research - assuming of course that the funds remain in the appropriate State or Congressional district.

This clearly does not argue that the nearly $1 billion dollars in research earmarks are a valid way to select research priorities. There is some movement in the right direction since in the current Congress, research earmarks are 60% below their peak level reached in 2006. But while earmarked research may not go to the best possible research, most of the funds are used for perfectly respectable research that should be counted in baseline used for budget comparisons. In fact it turns out that the administration’s own budget is filled with earmarks including a $2.1 million neutrino detector and $28 million directed to General Electric and Siemens for do research on hydrogen-fuel turbines.

Eye of the beholder:
The official definition of “earmarks” does not include enormous research projects that would never have been selected given an honest assessment of national goals. Given the national security threats faced by the US in the coming decades it’s astonishing that cold war research programs in nuclear weapons, missile defense, and aircraft to fight the Soviet Union continue virtually unchallenged. The manned space program may have made political sense when it was begun, but would never have met “peer review” criteria if the peers were people interested in astronomy or astrophysics. Yet these programs continue to absorb the lion’s share of NASA budgets - largely because of the political pressures from Florida, Texas, and other states where the manned programs support huge numbers of people.

The result of this creative accounting is a research program that is, at best, difficult to understand. It is good to see that funding for NSF, NIST and the Office of Science in the Department of Energy are getting sharply increased funding as a result of the America Competes initiative, but this growth is paid for with shockingly large cuts in other research programs. The authors of the National Academy study that led to this initiative state directly that increases in physical science research are badly needed this should be done “…without disinvesting in the health and biological sciences.” Yet this is just what has happened in the budget proposal. In constant dollars the administration proposes to cut research funding in HHS by nearly 2% (4% cut compared to FY07).

The 19% growth in funds requested for the office of science in the Department of Energy is badly needed - particularly given the sharp cuts suffered last year. However this growth this has been offset by sharp cuts in funding for the agency’s core missions in energy efficiency and energy supply research. And since hugely expensive white elephants like the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership are given priority in the budget, most of the technologies that can actually help meet US energy and climate goals at acceptable prices are cut sharply. Since NSF budget actually declined last year, the administration’s proposal would leave the NSF budget 4% above FY07 levels.

It’s impossible to see how NASA can sustain a huge new manned space initiative with a proposed FY2007-2009 increase in funding without further strangling the investments that will actually lead to fundamental discoveries in the origins and structure of the universe and the matter in it. Under the proposed budget, basic research in NASA would fall nearly 11% between FY2008 and FY2009.

It’s also difficult to see how the Department of Defense can focus on complex future threats while its overall research budget shrinks. The administration budget creates a situation where the total DoD research budget declines an average of 3.45% a year between FY2007 and FY2009. Given that funding for hoary favorites like strategic defense and the development of new nuclear weapons remains strong, funding to meet the critical needs of future defense and intelligence services are sharply reduced.

Forest through the trees:
If the US economy depends on competing in a highly competitive global marketplace, and by the administration’s own budget document states that “Economists estimate that as much as half of post World War II economic growth is directly due to technological progress fueled by R&D” it’s difficult to understand why the Administration proposes cutting Federal Science and Technology investments. If the Administration’s strategy of relying on technology and innovation to address the problem of global climate change, it’s difficult to understand why it proposes cuts in critical areas of research.

The FY2009 budget is extremely opaque and a detailed critique will require much more work. On the whole the research budget proposed seems long on symbolism and short on strategy. It does not provide a sensible blueprint to start negotiations with the Congress about building a research portfolio responsive the enormous challenges faced by the US in 2009. Gerry Epstein has already identified one major mystery: a $2 billion research facility proposed for the Department of Homeland security for purposes we can’t find in the budget documents. We hope that others will step forward to interpret the budget and help. R&D can and should be a place for strong bipartisan agreement. The current proposal seems determined to ensure that this will not occur. We can only hope that the Congress can restore seriousness to the process.

Dr. Henry Kelly is the President of the Federation of American Scientists and the Chairman of the Board of Directors for Scientists and Engineers for America.