COMPUTING RESEARCH POLICY BLOG

Here’s some of the agency-by-agency wrap-up in the wake of the FY 2005 Omnibus Bill. We’ve detailed some of the blow-by-blow in the lead-up to final passage here. All figures include the 0.80 percent across-the-board cut imposed on all non-defense agencies to pay for additional spending in other parts of the bill.
NSF: NSF will lose $105 million for FY 05 (compared to FY 04), a cut of 1.9%. The largest cut is to the Education and Human Resources Directorate ($98 million, 10%), with most of that cut falling on the Graduate Education and Research, Evaluation & Communication accounts. The Major Research Equipment account will see an increase of about $19 million over FY04. Research and Related Activities (home of CISE) was to be held essentially flat for FY05, but will lose $30 million (0.7%) as the result of the across-the-board cut. Here’s the breakout:

FY 2005 NSF Appropriations (in millions)
Account	FY 2004 Level	FY 05 Budget Request	FY 2005 House Mark	FY 2005 Senate Mark	FY 2005 Final Approps*	$ Change FY 05 Final vs FY 04	% Change FY 05 Final vs FY 04
Research and Related Activities	$4,251	$4,452	$4,152	$4,402	$4,221	-$30	-0.7%
Major Research Equip	$155	$213	$208	$130	$174	$19	12%
Education and Human Resources	$939	$771	$843	$929	$841	-$98	-10%
Salaries and Expenses	$219	$294	$250	$269	$223	$4	1.8%
National Science Board	$4	$4	$4	$4	$4	$0	0%
Inspector General	$10	$10	$10	$10	$10	$0	0%
Total	$5,578	$5,745	$5,467	$5,745	$5,473	-$105	-1.9%
*includes 0.80 percent across-the-board cut

Department of Energy Office of Science: The Office of Science received a 2.8 percent increase over FY 2004, to $3.6 billion. Included in the increase was $30 million for the development of a “Leadership Class” supercomputer at DOE ($25 million for hardware, $5 million for software development). Some additional details here.
NIST Labs: The Labs faced a dire funding situation as a result of last year’s omnibus appropriation, but received some of that back this year in the form of a 10 percent increase, to $379 million. Not as good as the Senate appropriation level of $384 million, but better than the House approved level of $375 million.
NASA: The NASA budget will increase 4.6 percent for FY 2005 to $16.1 billion, thanks in part to $800 million in additional funding targeted for the President’s Moon and Mars initiative. The $800 million was necessary to avoid a veto from the President and to ensure the support of GOP majority whip Rep. Tom Delay. Unfortunately, given the strict funding constraints placed on the appropriations committee by the congressional leadership and the Administration, the additional funding had to come at the expense of other agencies within the bill.
National Institutes of Health: The National Institutes of Health (NIH) budget of $28.6 billion is just 2 percent above last year’s funding level, well off the 15 percent annual increases between 1998 and 2003. Most NIH institutes will receive increases between 1.6 and 2.5 percent.
Rep. Vern Ehlers (R-MI) was among the first to issue a press release condemning the decrease in funding for the National Science Foundation in the Omnibus Bill. His press release can be found after the jump.

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Conflicting rumors abound regarding the outlook for NSF in the FY 05 appropriations process. As House and Senate negotiators attempt to put the finishing touches on an omnibus appropriations bill by Friday or Saturday, word comes that NSF will likely not fare well in the bill. GovExec.com reports that a bit of rule-bending employed by the Senate to “find” an additional $1.2 billion in funding in their version of the VA-HUD-Independent agencies appropriation bill, which includes funding for NSF, isn’t acceptable to the House leadership or the White House budget office. So in order to stay within the budget cap, appropriators will have offset any increase in spending with funding from elsewhere in the bill.
In order to fund the President’s lunar/Mars initiative at NASA, it appears other agencies in the bill will bear the brunt. GovExec.com reports that NSF is slated for a $60 million cut overall compared to the agency’s FY 2004 funding level, but that “research funding” — presumably the agency’s Research and Related Activities account, which contains funding for NSF CISE — will “remain frozen” at FY 2004 levels.
A second rumor making the rounds suggests that the situation at NSF may be even more grim, with funding levels below the levels approved by the House appropriations committee. That level, you may recall, would be a 2.0 percent reduction in NSF’s budget compared to FY 2004.
We continue to press Congress on the importance of supporting funding at NSF at adequate levels. Keep an eye on this space for the latest details….
Update (11/19 12:30pm): Now hearing that the $60 million cut to NSF’s non-research account is in addition to an across-the-board 0.75 percent to all agencies, which would translate into another $41 million from NSF. Also hearing the bill will be released at 2 pm today.
Update (11/20 11:30am): We’ve got the final numbers for NSF in the bill. $98 million cut from the Education and Human Resources account (plus an increase of $19 million to the Major Research Equipment account), and an across-the-board cut of 0.75 percent. Here’s a copy of bill language (pdf, 360kb) for NSF. Here’s the final breakout:

Last Update: We’ve got the joint statement from the conferees regarding the NSF funding levels online now.
I lied. One More Update: Two things. One, the Energy and Water Appropriations bill did make it into the Omnibus, and it did contain $30 million for DOE’s Leadership Class Supercomputer ($25 million for hardware, $5 million for software development) we’ve covered recently.
Two, the across the board cut was actually 0.8%, not 0.75% as I reported above. I’ll make the corrections soon, but at NSF’s level of resolution, it shouldn’t change things too much. Ok, chart is updated (11/22).

The House today re-passed HR 4516, the High End Computing Revitalization Act of 2004, which would authorize the creation of a “leadership class” supercomputer at DOE and a “High-end Software Development Center.” The House action means that the bill will now head to the President, who is expected to sign it.
We’ve covered the bill in detail in this space previously. Because it’s an authorization, it doesn’t actually include any money (just “authorizes” sums to be spent should the money get appropriated). Funding for a “leadership class” computer ($30 million, including $25 million for hardware) is included in the House version of the FY 2005 Energy and Water appropriations bill. However, it’s unlikely that bill will make it into the Omnibus Appropriations bill expected to be considered later this week because portions dealing with the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository are deemed too contentious to get resolved before Congress adjourns. This means those agencies funded under the Energy and Water bill may not get an appropriation for FY 05 and may instead operate under a special “continuing resolution.” It’s not clear at this point what that continuing resolution might look like and whether or not it would contain any funding for the proposed supercomputer.
We’ll have a better idea by Thanksgiving when the 108th Congress is expected to adjourn for good.
The House Science Committee issued a press release marking the passage of HR 4516, but it doesn’t appear to be on their website yet. You can find it after the jump.
Update: The Chronicle of Higher Ed has more (sub req’d), including a quote from CRA board member Dan Reed:

Daniel A. Reed, vice chancellor for information technology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said that the law would increase the political visibility of supercomputing in the United States. Mr. Reed and other supporters of the bill say that the American supercomputing industry has lost its competitiveness and is not making products that can be used for cutting-edge research.
“This will help put it back on the front burner,” Mr. Reed said.

Update (11/22): The Energy and Water appropriations bill referred to above did get included in the Omnibus Appropriations bill, and it did include $30 million for DOE’s Leadership Class computing effort — $25 million for hardware, $5 million for software development.
Update (11/30): The President has signed the bill!

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