The President's budget request for FY 2007 has just been released and we'll be dissecting it and providing our analysis as we get through it. But I wanted to post a quick snapshot of the Networking and Information Technology Research and Development program, the federal government's multi-agency IT research and development effort, because 1) it's the number of greatest concern to the computing research community and 2) it highlights the near-fruitlessness of trying to track the federal investment in IT R&D on a year-to-year basis.
For FY 07, the President is requesting $3.09 billion in aggregate funding for NITRD, an increase of $930 million over the FY 06 budget request -- a huge increase. However, in that peculiar DC way, that's only a 2 percent increase over FY 06 actual. That's because the baseline budget has changed significantly since the Administration last calculated its IT R&D expenditures. The Department of Defense apparently discovered it was funding a lot more IT R&D than it previously thought -- $851 million more in FY06 than it spent in FY05 an increase of more than 400 percent.
How can this happen? Well, each agency is responsible for determining what its own contribution to the NITRD program actually is. If the criteria that agency uses to determine whether a particular expense is IT R&D related or not changes, the department's contribution can change dramatically. Does it mean that there actually will be $851 million more available to researchers in FY06 than there was in FY05? Not likely, but I'd sure like to get my hands on the spreadsheet used to produce that number. Perhaps we'll get a better look when the NITRD coordinating office releases its annual "blue book" report for FY07.
Anyway, the good news is the NITRD program is slated for continued growth in FY07 (despite the widely fluctuating baseline numbers). Overall, the program will increase 2 percent, higher than any of the other government-wide "crosscutting" research programs (Nanotechnology will actually see a 2 percent decline, though that's subject to some of the same odd DOD accounting changes; and the Climate Change program is flat). NSF would see a 12 percent increase in its NITRD funding, and DOE would see an increase of 23 percent.
Update: (2/7/06 9:45pm) - I really should just trash this entry and start over, but it seems somehow more appropriate to leave the big strikethrough section for posterity.
After consulting with Simon Szykman, who heads the National Coordinating Office for NITRD, I've got a little better information on what is actually going on with the widely fluctuating budget numbers in the NITRD cross-cut. I can't say I completely understand all the reasons, but I at least have some sense of what's going on. Apologies to Simon if I screw this explanation up. This is likely uninteresting to all but the most hard-core federal funding geeks, but to me, it's a great lesson in how tricky it is to rely on aggregate funding totals for any insight into federal policy.
In the early '90s the decision was made -- for reasons I don't yet know -- to exclude a number of programs in DOD from being counted as part of what would become the NITRD "cross-cut." In particular, IT R&D investments at the DOD service labs -- Air Force Research Lab, Army Research Lab, Naval Research Lab -- weren't included in the "Defense" line and weren't calculated as part of the overall NITRD program.
For the FY 07 budget, the White House Office of Management and Budget (the gatekeepers for the budget process in the executive branch) reviewed the program accounting and decided that the legacy way of reporting the NITRD cross-cut was no longer accurate. To describe the full breadth of the federal government's NITRD investments, R&D spending in the DOD service labs had to be included. So OMB produced this chart -- which ran in the original version of this post -- and included it in the Analytical Perspectives (pdf) supplement to the FY 2007 Budget Request. (Though I added the first column, "FY 05 (est)," just for comparison's sake.)
dollars in millions OMB version | ||||||
(est)1 | (actual) | (est) | (request) | FY06-FY07 | FY06-FY07 | |
| Defense | 277 | 775 | 1128 | 1018 | -110 | -10% |
| NSF | 795 | 811 | 810 | 904 | 94 | 12% |
| HHS | 573 | 571 | 551 | 541 | -10 | -2 |
| Energy | 383 | 377 | 384 | 473 | 89 | 23% |
| NASA | 192 | 163 | 78 | 82 | 4 | 5% |
| Commerce | 58 | 60 | 60 | 65 | 5 | 8% |
| EPA | 4 | 4 | 6 | 6 | 0 | 0% |
| Total | 2282 | 2761 | 3017 | 3089 | 72 | 2% |
| 1Estimated expenditures in the FY 06 Budget Request. | ||||||
Obviously, we'll have much more as we get a little more time to dive into the budget. Stay tuned...
Now, as we've figured out, this spread of numbers isn't very useful for year-to-year comparisons. The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy realized this, too, so they now keep a second set of numbers which uses -- roughly -- the same set of agencies and programs that had been the norm until FY 07. Here's the OSTP version:
dollars in millions OSTP Version | ||||||
(actual) | (actual) | (est) | (request) | FY06-FY07 | FY06-FY07 | |
| Defense | 310 | 775 | 743 | 790 | 47 | 6.3% |
| NSF | 636 | 811 | 810 | 904 | 94 | 11.6% |
| HHS | 277 | 571 | 563 | 548 | -15 | -2.7 |
| Energy | 326 | 377 | 291 | 387 | 96 | 33.0% |
| NASA | 177 | 163 | 78 | 82 | 4 | 5.1% |
| Commerce | 38 | 60 | 53 | 66 | 13 | 24.5% |
| EPA | 4 | 4 | 6 | 6 | 0 | 0% |
| Total | 1768 | 2761 | 2544 | 2783 | 239 | 9.4% |
You'll note that when the military services are pulled from the numbers, DOD actually appears to receive an increase in the request versus FY06, which seems to indicate that the service labs don't fare particularly well in the President's budget. Szykman indicated that the DOD numbers for FY06 and FY07 in this chart also include, for the first time, funding from the DOD High Performance Computing Modernization Office. This isn't new money.
Finally, you'll note that some of the non-DOD numbers have changed in the second chart. According to Szykman, that's likely due to further refinement as the chart worked its way through OMB to final release. Apparently the OSTP version is the "newer" version, and therefore its numbers are likely to be more accurate.
Presumably, we'll have the final word when the NITRD NCO releases its FY07 Budget Supplement (the "Blue book," which is now -- of course -- red) sometime in the next few weeks.
So what's the take-away from all of this? I don't really know, honestly. OSTP indicates that NITRD is up 9.4 percent in the President's request over last year, but that includes additional funding in the calculation for FY07 that isn't really new money. The OMB numbers indicate it's more like 2.0 percent, but those numbers include a whole bunch of funding that's apparently never been considered before.
Update: (2/8/06 8:39 am) - Ok, final update to this post. After some additional clarification from Szykman, it does appear that the OSTP-indicated increase of 9.4 percent is an accurate estimate of the status of the NITRD "legacy" programs OSTP is tracking. We'll have further details in future posts about what exactly that 9.4 percent increase includes. But for now, maybe what's most important for computing researchers is the knowledge that the traditional three big supporters for fundamental computing research -- NSF, DOE and DOD/DARPA -- all would see increases in the coming year under the President's plan.
From OSTP:
High-end computing (HEC) continues to be a major focus of NITRD. DoE's Office os Science (DoE SC), NSF and NASA are all engaged in developing and/or operating leadership class computing systems as recommended in the 2004 Federal Plan for High-End Computing, with the goal of deploying petascale computing systems by the year 2010. The DoE SC 2007 investment of $103M in leadership class computing, coupled with NSF's investment of $50M in their Office of Cyber Infrastructure, will ensure that U.S. scientists and researchers have access to the most powerful computational resources in the world. Similarly, NASA continues to emphasize high-end computing within its NITRD portfolio through the operation of the Project Columbia supercomputer. All three agencies have pledged to make a portion of their leadership class computing systems available to other Federal users and the larger research community.We'll have more on some of the agency-by-agency specifics as we get a chance to pour through the budget documents a little closer. As this episode points out, even a close reading of the documents isn't always enough. And to think, if it's this difficult to figure out the dollar amounts involved in this cross-agency program, imagine how difficult it is to coordinate research priorities and research activities....A 9% increase in support for advanced networking research in 2007, primarily by NSF, DARPA and DoE SC, will ensure that large-scale networking technologies will keep pace with the rapid development of petascale computing systems, so that the results of petascale computations are immediately accessible for analysis.
The 2007 Budget also includes significant increases in long-term fundamental research in cyber security and information assurance, as recommended by the President's Information Technology Advisory Committee. Budget increases in cyber security and information assurance for NSF (+28%), DHS (+43%) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (+11%) will support substantial new research activities to help secure the Nation's information infrastructure, including fundamental research, and support for large-scale cyber security test beds and data sets.
Stay tuned.
House and Senate negotiators have reached agreement on one of the final hurdles in the FY 06 appropriations process: the FY06 Defense Appropriations bill (H.R. 2863), which contains cuts to DOD Basic Research, DARPA's Cognitive Computing program (though not as bad as originally feared) and the long rumored 1.0 percent "across the board" cut to all discretionary spending.
The bill would have boosted overall Defense R&D (that's the aggregate of 6.1 Basic, 6.2 Applied, and 6.3 Advanced Technology Development) by 2.6 percent in FY 2006. However, the across-the-board cut (ATB for short) -- included in the bill to help "pay for" the large, unanticipated spending for hurricane relief approved earlier this year -- will reduce that increase to just 1.6 percent, bringing the total to $13.3 billion for FY 2006.
Basic Research at DOD is the big loser in the overall R&D portfolio, facing a 2.5 percent cut after the ATB to $1.48 billion in FY 06. Applied Research will increase 7.1 percent to $5.19 billion. And Advanced Technology Development will see a 1.4 percent cut to $6.61 billion.
The cuts to the basic research accounts fall mainly on the service-led efforts. Army 6.1 research will see a 4.9 percent reduction, Navy 6.1 a 2.9 percent cut, and Air Force 6.1 a 5.0 percent cut. The Defense-wide basic research account -- which is primarily DARPA and spending in the DOD Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) -- will see an increase of 6.3 percent, to $261.4 million in FY 06. Defense-wide 6.2 research will increase 4.9 percent to $2.01 billion, and defense-wide 6.3 development will decrease 4.5 percent to $3.18 billion.
Within the defense-wide account, the two programs of most concern to the computing research community both took hits in the bill. The Information and Communications Technology account was funded by appropriators at the President's requested level of $198.8 million; however, the ATB cut will reduce that 1 percent to $196.8 million. Much harder hit was the "Learning, Reasoning and Cognitive Systems" account within DARPA's Cognitive Computing Systems program. As we detailed previously, Senate appropriators took aim at DARPA's cognitive computing program to the tune of $55 million, cutting the $114 million program by nearly 50 percent. The final conference report backed off that $55 million cut by $20 million, leaving the program $35 million short of the FY 2005 level for FY 2006.
In fighting the cut, CRA and its allies in the university community learned that the Senate appropriators were not sufficiently convinced of the military utility of the effort by the original DARPA program justification. Our efforts rallying some Senate support -- and the intervention of the Senate Armed Services Committee staff -- helped warm the appropriations committee somewhat to the program, but not enough to give back all of the $55 million they had taken from the program to fund other activities within the bill.
Moving forward, it will be important for the computing community early next year to reach out to both the House and Senate appropriators and buttress DARPA's budget justification for the program by really highlighting the military utility of the research. In the process of fighting the cut this year, we've developed some good material. We need to amplify that and make sure the right folks in Congress get the message. CRA will be leading that charge....
The Defense Appropriations conference report has already been approved by the House, but as of this writing has not yet cleared the Senate. The bill, by virtue of its "must pass" status and its late consideration, has become a Christmas tree of sorts for legislators eager to include provisions they've been unable to pass in other vehicles. Consequently, the bill is loaded with provisions not obviously germane to the Department of Defense, like authorization for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), $29 billion in further hurricane aid, and $3.8 billion for flu preparations. Senate Democrats strongly opposed to the ANWR provision have threatened to use whatever parliamentary devices they can to hold up consideration of the bill until they can get the provision removed. As a result, it's not clear when the Senate will finally approve the bill and send it on to the President for signature (or back to the House if they manage to strip some House-approved provisions).
As always, stay tuned to this channel for further details as they develop. We'll have the final wrap-up on FY06, including how the 1.0 percent ATB cut affected the science agencies, in a future (very near future) post.
...all things considered.
The House passed the conference version of the FY 06 Energy and Water Appropriations bill (H.R. 2419) today (399-17). Included in the bill is funding for the Department of Energy's Office of Science, and within the Office of Science, the Office of Advanced Scientific Computing Research. Both the Office of Science and ASCR will see slight increases in FY 06 compared to FY 05. Office of Science will see an increase of $33 million over FY 05 -- $170 million over the Administration's request -- to $3.63 billion. ASCR received $237.1 million, $30 million more than the President's request and $5 million more than FY 05 (an increase of about 2.2 percent).
Neither increase is particularly dramatic, but in a year in which the pressure to cut discretionary spending is relatively severe, DOE computing fared OK.
Here's what the appropriations conferees had to say about the program:
Advanced Scientific Computing Research.--The conference agreement includes $237,055,000 for advanced scientific computing research, an increase of $30,000,000 over the budget request. This increase is provided to the Center for Computational Sciences to accelerate the efforts to develop a leadership-class supercomputer to meet scientific computational needs. Of this $30,000,000, $25,000,000 should be dedicated to hardware and $5,000,000 to competitive university research grantsThe bill is expected to get Senate approval on Thursday.
The House and Senate just reached agreement on the FY 06 Commerce, Justice, Science Appropriations bill and it appears NSF will receive just over a 3 percent bump over FY 05. Details are a bit scant at the moment, but it appears NSF will receive $5.65 billion in FY 06 -- that's $10 million more than the House approved in its version of the bill, $50 million over the President's request, and $120 million over the Senate number.
There are still a couple of unknowns at the moment -- whether the agreement means CJS is safe from across-the-board cuts that are still possible, and the disposition of a transfer of Coast Guard ships to NSF that could effect the overall NSF number -- but NSF is in a much better situation at the moment than most of us thought was possible at this point.
More details as they emerge....
Update (4:20 pm, 11/4): Here are some of the specific numbers (compare to this chart for previously approved House and Senate levels):
NSF Overall - $5,653.27 million. That's 3.3 percent above FY05 and nearly one percent about the President's request.
Research and Related Activities: $4,387.52 million. That's 4 percent above FY05 and 1.2 percent above the President's request.
Major Research Equipment and Facilities Construction: $193.35 million. Equal to the House and Senate versions.
Education and Human Resources: $807 million. That's equal to the House number, 9.5 percent higher than the President's request, and includes $4 million above the President's request for the Math and Science Partnership.
Salaries and Expenses: $250 million. 12 percent above FY05 but 7 percent below the President's request.
Office of the Inspector General: $11.5 million
National Science Board: $4 million
An across-the-board cut still looms. The Conference appears to have exceeded its spending target for the bill, so there will likely be some across-the-board cut to repair the problem before the bill is actually filed on Monday. According to NSF, appropriations staff indicate that the cut would amount to no more than 0.3 percent at this point (which would mean NSF would lose approximately $17 million of the funding gained above), leaving them with about a 3 percent gain overall.
Even with the possibility of a 0.3 percent across the board cut, NSF fared very well -- exceeding even the high mark originally laid down by the House Appropriations committee last May. Credit for this improvement in fortune has to go to the coalitions and individuals who have advocated strongly for better support for basic science even in the face of an ugly, ugly budget environment. And, of course, thanks are also owed to those members of Congress who worked hard to achieve any increase for NSF in the face of enormous pressures to cut discretionary spending. In the coming weeks we'll single out quite a few of those members, but right off the top it's worth passing along our thanks to Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA), Rep. Alan Mollohan (D-WV), Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL), and Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) who are the Chairs and Ranking Members of the House and Senate appropriations subcommittees with jurisdiction over NSF.
The governors of 27 states have sent a letter to President Bush urging him to "ensure that federal funding for university-based research remains a top national priority" in FY 2006 and beyond. In their letter, the 16 Democratic and 11 Republican governors make the case that basic research has been the fuel for innovation in their states -- as well as a creator of high-wage jobs and an enabler of workforce productivity -- and they credit the universities and labs performing the research with being "the training ground for our country's next generation of highly-skilled workers." They also cite the changing competitive environment that challenges current U.S. dominance in technology innovation:
Through economic globalization, competition in research and development has risen dramatically in the last few years. Asian and European countries have committed new resources to scientific and engineering research programs at nearly unprecedented rates. While the U.S. currently remains a global leader in science and technology, we must continue to be at the forefront of discovery and development. Only by investing in the research of today can we take full advantage of the innovations of tomorrow. Despite a period of scarce resources, basic science and engineering research is a vital national investment.This is an important message for the President to hear, especially as the Administration is working now to put together his FY 2007 budget in time for its February release.
Unfortunately, the U.S. basic research enterprise is going to need all the help it can get. As we've noted before, it appears that pressures will be high on Congress to cut mandatory and discretionary spending (including federal science agencies) to offset the spiraling costs for hurricane relief and a possible tax cut. Yesterday, House Majority Leader Roy Blunt noted that Congress will be focusing on three pieces of budget legislation before they wrap up the current session this fall: a package carving savings from mandatory programs, an across-the-board cut in discretionary spending and a new hurricane relief package. Any across-the-board cut is likely to once again fall on agencies like the National Science Foundation, which suffered a similar 2 percent cut last year.
So any effort by an influential group like the 27 governors who signed this letter (and thanks to the Science Coalition for "working" this letter), is useful in the attempt to reverse what is becoming a very damaging trend of cutbacks in federal support for fundamental research.
Here's the full letter (pdf, 1 mb). Did your governor sign?
As I noted in the last post, the Senate Appropriations Committee included language in the Senate verision of the FY 06 Defense Appropriations bill that would strip $55 million from an element of DARPA's Cognitive Computing program -- a move that seems to run counter to recent congressional sentiment on the role of computer science, especially university-led fundamental computer science, at DARPA. The "out of the blue" cut -- there was no advance warning provided by appropriations staffers, no evidence that there was dissatisfaction with the program -- would fall on the "Learning, Reasoning, and Integrated Cognitive Systems (pdf)" (COG-2) account. With little feedback from the Senate appropriators, we're operating under the assumption that the main impetus for the cut was to provide an offset for increases elsewhere in the bill, though there's been some speculation among Senate staff that the program may have suffered do to a misperception that it's somehow similar to some of the agency's more controversial bio-related programs.
It's not. As we've tried to point out to the conferees who will have to determine whether the cut will stand in the compromise bill negotiated with the House (the House opted to fund the program at the agency's requested level), research in learning, reasoning, and cognitive systems is focused on intelligent intrepretations of signals and data, on controlling unmanned vehicles, and on amplifying human effectiveness. Its aim is to reduce U.S. casualties by providing improved command and control and tactical planning against adversaries, as well as improved training systems. Work in this area includes research responsible for the Command Post of the Future (CPOF) -- a software system currently deployed and very widely-used in Iraq to coordinate battle plans and integrate multiple intelligence reports, providing U.S. forces the capability to plan, execute and replan much faster than the enemy's decision cycle and cited by Secretary Rumsfeld as the major contributor to victory in the first phase of Operation Iraqi Freedom. It's also cricital to the research and development of autonomous, unmanned vehicles that amplify our warfighting capability while reducing the number of U.S. forces in harm's way. Cutting support so significantly for this research will hamper advancements in defense-related IT in the short- and long-term and will slow technological advancements essential to current and future military operations in Iraq and around the globe.
It also runs completely counter to recent concerns of Congress, PITAC and the DOD's Defense Science Board. All three bodies have raised strong concerns about the shift of DARPA resources away from fundamental research at universities, especially in information technology. The Cognitive Computing program is one area where DARPA has responded positively to these concerns.
Because these "out of the blue" cuts are so difficult to counter -- they appear very late in the process with very little information about what motivated them and at a time when access to appropriations staff is most limited -- we've focused our strategy opposing the cut by urging the members of the conference committee to abandon the Senate number and adopt the President's budget request, the number approved by the House. You can help. We'll tell you how soon....
(in millions of dollars) |
||||||
Budget Request |
House |
Senate |
FY05 (%) |
FY05 (%) |
||
| Research and Related Activities | 4,220.6 | 4,333.5 | 4,310 | 4,345.2 | 2.1% | 3.0% |
| MREFC | 173.7 | 250 | 193.4 | 193.4 | 11.3% | 11.3% |
| Education and Human Resources | 841.4 | 737 | 807 | 747 | -4.1% | -11.2% |
| Salaries and Expenses | 223.2 | 269 | 250 | 229.9 | 12.0% | 3.0% |
| National Science Board | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 0% | 0% |
| Office of the Inspector General | 10 | 11.5 | 11.5 | 11.5 | 15% | 15% |
| Total NSF | 5,472.9 | 5,605 | 5,643.3 | 5,531 | 3.1% | 1.1% |
NIST:
(in millions of dollars) |
||||||
Budget Request |
House |
Senate |
FY05 (%) |
FY05 (%) |
||
| STRS (NIST Labs) | 378.7 | 426.3 | 397.7 | 399.9 | 5.0% | 5.6% |
|
65.4 | |||||
| Industrial Tech Services | 247.9 | 46.8 | 106 | 246 | -57.2% | -0.8% |
|
107.5 | 46.8 | 106 | 106 | -1.4% | -1.4% |
|
0 | 140 | ||||
| Construction of Research Facilities | 72.5 | 58.9 | 45 | 198.6 | -37.9% | 173.9% |
| Total NIST | 699.1 | 532 | 548.7 | 844.5 | -21.5% | 20.8% |
(in millions of dollars) |
||||||
Budget Request |
House |
Senate |
FY05 (%) |
FY05 (%) |
||
| Office of Science | 3,599.9 | 3,462.7 | 3,666 | 3,702 | 1.8% | 2.9% |
|
1,104.6 | 1,146 | 1,173.1 | 1,241 | 6.2% | 12.3% |
|
232 | 207 | 246 | 207 | 6.0% | -10.8% |
NASA:
(in millions of dollars) |
||||||
Budget Request |
House |
Senate |
FY05 (%) |
FY05 (%) |
||
| Science, Aeronautics and Exploration | 7,806.13 | 9,661 | 9,725.8 | 9,761 | 24.6% | 25.0% |
| Exploration Capabilities | 8,358.4 | 6,763 | 6,712.9 | 6,603 | -19.7% | -21.0% |
| Office of the Inspector General | 31.3 | 32.4 | 32.4 | 32.4 | 3.5% | 3.5% |
| Total NASA | 16,195.8 | 16,456.4 | 16,471.1 | 16,396.4 | 1.7% | 1.2% |
| 3 Includes $126.0 million in supplemental appropriations Note: NASA moved some programmatic funds between the Science and the Exploration Capabilities account for FY 06, resulting in the big net changes shown in the figures above. | ||||||
NOAA:
(in millions of dollars) |
||||||
Budget Request |
House |
Senate |
FY05 (%) |
FY05 (%) |
||
| Operations Research and Facilities | 2,793.61 | 2,531.2 | 2,447 | 3,203 | 12.4% | 14.7% |
| Total NOAA | 3,925.12 | 3,581.2 | 3,429 | 4,476 | -12.6% | 14.0% |
| 1 Includes $24.0 million in supplemental appropriations 2 Includes $58.9 million in supplemental appropriations |
||||||
In theory, with the Senate's consideration of the Commerce, Science, Justice bill we should have a more complete view of how federal science agencies should fare in the FY 06 appropriations process. But in reality, even with the Senate and House numbers, there are other factors at play that make predicting a "final" number impossible at this point.
The most significant "X" factor is the impact of the federal response to Hurricane Katrina -- ultimately expected to exceed over $200 billion in emergency spending. As that number grows, so does the chorus of voices calling for other cuts in federal spending to mitigate the blow to the budget (including efforts in the blogosphere gaining some attention). The House Republican Study Committee -- which numbers about 100 GOP congressmen -- has already announced "Operation Offset," a list of budget cuts (pdf) that could be used to help offset the predicted spending. Included in the recommendations are cuts to the NSF Math and Science Program (saving $188 million this year), canceling NASA's Moon/Mars Initiative (saving $1.5 billion), and eliminating ATP and MEP ($140 million and $110 million respectively).
While it's not likely that budget cuts will happen line-by-line as the RSC suggests, it's possible that the leadership could adopt an across-the-board recision to all federal agencies as they did last year -- which cost NSF (and every other Science agency, save NASA's shuttle and moon/mars program) 2% of their FY 05 appropriation. Another slightly less likely possibility is that the appropriators decide to punt on FY 06 funding and pass a Continuing Resolution that lasts the duration of the fiscal year, freezing funding across the board.
With ten appropriations bills still unfinished and the start of the 2006 fiscal year only 5 days away, Congress will have to pass a Continuing Resolution to keep the federal government operating after October 1st. The first CR will hit the House floor on Wednesday and will likely keep things running through early November, absent the resolution of all outstanding appropriations bills. Funding in the CR will be set at either the lower of the Senate or House approved levels, or at the current level, with no new starts (or programs cancelled). There is some interest within the congressional leadership for sidestepping some of the concerns about Katrina offsets and the effect on the budget reconciliation process by passing a CR that would be in effect for all of FY 06.
Any of the scenarios above puts science funding in jeopardy for FY 06 and would prove very difficult for the science community to combat. The decision will be purely political, based on the extent of the leadership's fears that they'll be punished by conservatives in the 06 elections for spending so freely.
That noted, the science community still needs to weigh in on the appropriations debate. CRA's Computing Research Advocacy Network will be doing its part with an activity targeted at urging House members to support -- at the very least -- the increases they've already approved for NSF, NIST, and DOE Science (including ASC) in conference, and urging Senate members to the House number. If you haven't yet joined CRAN, now's your chance. CRAN members, keep your eyes peeled for the next CRAN alert, which will provide all the details.
The first details from the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice and Science markup of its FY 2006 appropriations bill seem to indicate the panel has placed a significantly lower priority on the National Science Foundation than their colleagues in the House. Details are scant at the moment -- we'll know more when the committee report accompanying the Senate bill is released later today or tomorrow -- but from the committee's press release it appears NSF would receive $5.5 billion for FY 2006, an increase of just $58.1 million over the FY 2005 estimated level, but $113 million less than the House approved last week. Given that some portion of the $58 million will have to be used by NSF to cover their new obligation to reimburse the U.S. Coast Guard for icebreaking efforts in support of the Foundation's polar programs, it's not clear that the agency's research programs will benefit much, if at all, from the subcommittee's increase.
Instead of a focus on NSF within the science portion of the bill, the subcommittee parted ways with the House by including a significant increase for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration -- $551 million above the FY 2005 level and $895 million above the President's request for FY 06 -- and by funding NIST's controversial Advanced Technology Program (ATP) at $140 million for FY 06. The House version of the bill cut NOAA funding and provided zero support for ATP.
The full appropriations committee is expected to mark up the Senate CJS bill on Thursday, so further detail should become available. There will be opportunities to address the inadequate support level for NSF apparently provided by the subcommittee. The bill will be open to amendment when it comes to the Senate floor -- but as with the House process, those amendments must be zero-sum, taking funding from one agency within the bill to pay for increases elsewhere -- and priorities can shift significantly during the conference process with the House. The widely differing priorities within the House and Senate versions has virtually guaranteed a contentious conference process, so the science community (including CRA) will have to continue to stay engaged to make sure NSF and the other science agencies receive as much support as possible. Watch this space for opportunities to be part of that process. If you haven't yet signed up for CRA's Computing Research Advocacy Network, now would be a great time....
Just updating yesterday's post, the amendment to the House FY 06 Science, State, Justice, Commerce Appropriations Act offered by Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) that would strip $126 million from NSF's research account to pay for an increase to the Community Oriented Policing Program (COPS), has been soundly defeated by the House. The final vote was 396-31 against the amendment.
Though there were a few factors at play in the rejection of the amendment, it still is a good sign for NSF that the members of the House weren't willing to cut funding for the agency, even to support local programs.
The House today concluded its first day of debate on the FY 2006 Science, State, Justice, Commerce Appropriations Act (H.R. 2682), a bill that would grant an increase in funding for the National Science Foundation and restore some science and aeronautics funding to NASA. This is the first time the House has considered NSF and NASA funding since the two agencies were removed from the jurisdiction of the Veterans' Affairs-Housing and Urban Development Appropriations subcommittee, so it's interesting to see how science will fare under the new organization. From today's debate, it appears that the competing agencies may have changed, but the competition for funding remains the same.
In previous years, NASA and NSF struggled for prominence in a bill that included funding for two relative behemoths in VA and HUD. We've detailed the disadvantage the two science agencies faced in that situation in a few posts during the debate on the appropriations reorganization last winter. In their new home, the agencies (as well as NOAA and NIST) find themselves competing with the Department of State and Department of Justice. While the science agencies did fairly well in the appropriations committee markup, given the current budget constraints -- the committee approved a 3.1 percent increase over FY 2005 for NSF and $15 million more for NASA -- on the House floor, both NSF and NASA find themselves at risk from amendments that would strip funding for them in favor of other priorities. This "robbing one agency to pay for an increase at another" is the result of the House rule under which appropriations bills are considered (Rule XXI, for those interested) that says that an amendment to an appropriations bill must only deal with agencies in that bill (can't cut NIH to pay for NSF, for example -- they're in different bills) and can't increase the level of budget authority or outlays in the bill. So it's a zero-sum game.
In previous years, because of their location in the VA-HUD bill, NSF and NASA were often targeted for cuts to pay for increases in Section 8 housing assistance, increases in veterans benefits and AIDS hospice care. This year, the threat comes from grants to State and local law enforcement agencies, the Community Oriented Policing program (COPS), and, in the case of NOAA, the "State Criminal Alien Assistance Program." (Rep. David Drier (R-CA) was successful in passing an amendment that would strip $50 million in funding for "operations, research and facilities at NOAA" to provide an additional $50 million for State Criminal Alien Assistance Program, which provides "federal payments to States and localities that incurred correctional officer salary costs for incarcerating undocumented criminal aliens with at least one felony or two misdemeanor convictions for violations of State or local law, and incarcerated for at least 4 consecutive days.")
Most worrisome to the science community is a draft amendment (pdf) from Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY), circulated today but likely to be offered tomorrow, that would strip $147 million from NSF's research account to increase the COPS program by an equal amount. The cut would leave just a $10 million "increase" to NSF research efforts for FY 2006, assuming no other amendments affect the funding level (and that increase is debatable, given a new obligation for NSF to reimburse the U.S. Coast Guard for icebreaking services at its polar facilities...see below for more detail). The science community has mobilized to urge Members of Congress to reject the amendment. The latest word is that Rep. Weiner is "redrafting" the amendment, but no indication whether that means he's found another target for his offset or not. We'll have more details as the debate continues tomorrow.
In the meantime, it's worth looking at what's in the bill as drafted that's relevant to the computing research community. Here's a summary:
Office of Science and Technology Policy: The bill would fund the White House's science policy shop at the President's requested level of $5.6 million for FY 2006. The appropriations committee, however, had some pointed words for the office in the committee report accompanying the bill, urging them to take seriously threats to American competitiveness that result from deprioritizing support for fundamental research:
The Committee is deeply concerned about the state of the Nation's dedication to maintaining our position as the world leader in science, technology and innovation. Further, the Committee is convinced that bold and dramatic commitments are necessary to ensure the United States' economic leadership in the 21st Century and a rising standard of living for all Americans. In this regard, the Committee encourages OSTP to ensure that Executive branch policy makers and budget officials understand the impact of stagnation in science and technology on all areas of national life. The Committee expects that future budget requests for science and technology programs will reflect the importance of these investments to the competitive and economic future of the nation.NASA: The bill would provide $16.5 billion for the space and aeronautics agency for FY 2006, an increase of $14.7 million over the budget request and $275 million more than the agency received in FY 2005 (which includes $126 million from last year's FY 05 emergency supplemental appropriation). The committee reversed cuts to the agency's science, aeronautics and exploration account included in the President's FY 06 request and instead would provide an increase of $265 million in FY 06, bringing total funding in the account to $9.7 billion.
NSF: NSF would increase 3.1 percent in FY 06 under the bill, to $5.6 billion -- an increase of $171 million over FY 05. The Research and Related Activities account would grow 3.7 percent to $4.4 billion in FY 06 -- an increase of $157 million over FY 05. However, included in that increase is funding to cover the reimbursement of icebreaking activities performed for NSF by the U.S. Coast Guard, so gauging the actual amount of increase to NSF research activities is a little tricky (it appears to me that the increase for the icebreaking expenses amount to about $75 million, but I'd appreciate some clarification from someone with better numbers...). The committee also didn't specify funding levels for individual directorates -- other than noting Polar Programs were to be provided up to $425 million, the same as the President's request. Rather, the committee would order NSF to submit to the committee its plan for disbursing the money within 60 days of the passsage of the act. The committee report also includes language that would authorize NSF to offer "innovation inducement prizes," an idea subcommittee chairman Frank Wolf (R-VA) is especially enamored with. Here's the relevant language from the report:
The concept of inducement awards to encourage broad involvement in solving a specifically stated scientific problem has been a catalyst for scientific advancement since at least the early 18th century. In 1999, a National Academies workshop on this topic encouraged Federal agencies to make more extensive use of this mechanism to pursue particular scientific and technological objectives. The Committee expects NSF to engage the National Academies to craft a prize or categories of prizes that would be of an appropriate scale and to develop the rules and conditions for awarding prizes, and to report back to the Committee on plans to initiate a prize program in fiscal year 2006. The Committee strongly encourages NSF to use this mechanism, particularly in programs that specifically emphasize innovation, to focus on high risk/high payoff research projects. The Committee also expects NSF to encourage private sector involvement in the effort to create a prize program.NSF's Major Research Equipment and Facilities Construction account would see a slight increase of $19.7 million for FY 06, but no new starts, as requested in the President's budget.
The bill would also reverse some of the cuts to the Education and Human Resources division included in the President's budget, but would still cut the account by more than $34 million. The bill includes "the full request" for the President's Math and Science Partnerships: 60 million -- a cut of $20 million from FY 05. Overall, the EHR account would decline to $807 million for FY 06.
NIST: NIST core research account would see an increase of 6.5 percent in the bill to $398 million in FY 06 -- an increase of $24 million over FY 2005. The bill would provide zero funding for the agency's controversial Advanced Technology Program (ATP), as requested in the President's budget, but would provide a slight increase in funding for the Manufacturing Extension Partnership program (MEP). The President had requested a cut to the program of more than 55 percent. The bill would provide $106 million for MEP, an increase of 1.4 percent; $59 million more than the President's request.
Though the NIST labs appear to do well under the bill, uncertainty over the disposition of ATP, as usual, clouds the picture for them. By providing no funding for ATP in FY 06, NIST may be forced to pay the "closing costs" for the grant program out of other funding in the agency. Typically, those costs have come out of the NIST core research programs. It's not hard to see that $24 million increase to NIST's core research account disappear in part or completely in the scramble to come up with funding to shut ATP down.
Tomorrow the House will likely complete debate on the bill and pass it. We'll have all the details. The Senate has yet to mark up its version of the bill, but is expected to shortly. Senate floor consideration likely won't happen until at least July.
Update: (6/15/05 - 11:54 am) -- Weiner offered his amendment this morning, slightly modified -- it strips $126 million from NSF rather than $147 million. Opposing the amendment on the floor were Appropriations Subcommittee Chair Frank Wolf (R-VA), Science Committee Chair Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY), and Appropriations Committee Ranking Member David Obey (D-WI). The amendment didn't prevail on a voice vote, but Weiner asked for a recorded vote that should occur around 1 pm.
Update: (6/15/05 - 2:22 pm) -- The amendment was defeated. More detail in this new post.
The House Appropriations Subcommittee on Science, Commerce, Justice, State marked-up it's FY 2006 appropriations bill earlier today and included increases for NSF and NASA. Details are a little sparse until we see the full committee print next week, but here are the early figures:
NSF would increase 3.1% -- $171 million over FY 2005, $38 million more than the President's request -- to $5.64 billion. NSF's research accounts would grow $157 million over FY 05 to $4.38 billion, and education and human resources would fall to $807 million, from $841 million in FY 05 -- but $70 million over the President's request.
NASA would receive $15 million more than the President's request, and $40 million that had been cut from the angecy's aeronautics program in the budget request will be restored.
NIST reportedly would receive $549 million, including $106 million for the controversial Manufacturers Extension Partnership program. (No word on ATP).
We'll have more details after the bill moves to the full Appropriations committee next week and the committee report accompanying the bill (and explaining the cuts and increases) is published.
The House Appropriations Committee on Wednesday completed its markup of the FY 2006 Energy and Water Appropriation bill (HR 2419), which includes funding for the Department of Energy, approving increased funding for DOE's Office of Science. The House bill would boost the Office of Science budget to $3.67 billion in FY 06, an increase of $66 million over FY 05, and $203 million more than the President requested in his FY 06 budget.
Included in the increase is a $14 million increase to the Advanced Scientific Computational Research program, bringing it to $246 million in FY 06, $39 million above the President's request. Here is what the committee had to say about the program in the committee report accompanying the bill:
ADVANCED SCIENTIFIC COMPUTING RESEARCHThis is the first good news for computing researchers in the FY 2006 appropriations cycle, coming after the House approved a slight cut to cyber security research efforts at the Department of Homeland Security.
The Committee recommendation is $246,055,000, an increase of $39,000,000 over the budget request. The additional $39,000,000 is provided to support the Office of Science initiative to develop the hardware, software, and applied mathematics necessary for a leadership-class supercomputer to meet scientific computation needs; not more than $25,000,000 of this increase should be dedicated to hardware, and $9,000,000 of the total increase should be dedicated to competitive university research grants. The Committee is disappointed that the Department's fiscal year 2006 budget request did not preserve the increases that Congress provided for this purpose during the past two fiscal years. Consistent with guidance provided in prior years, the Committee has chosen not to earmark these additional funds for a particular laboratory or a particular technology. However, the Committee expects the Department to make full use of the laboratory-industry capabilities that have already been selected competitively in previous years and not `reinvent the wheel' each fiscal year.
The House is scheduled to consider the bill on the floor early next week. The Senate hasn't yet begun work on its version of the bill. Fortunately, support for the Office of Science in the Senate appears pretty strong. A letter urging Senate Appropriators to approve a significant increase to the Office of Science (to $3.7 billion, slightly more than the House approved), received the endorsement of more than 2/3 of the members of the Senate, a strong symbolic show of support for the agency. We'll keep you apprised of developments as the bill moves forward.
Despite a $213 million increase to the Department of Homeland Security's Science and Technology Directorate in FY 2006 and a report from a presidential advisory committee noting the dangerous lack of support for cyber security research at DHS, the House approved a cut to cyber security research activities at the agency as part of the FY 2006 Homeland Security appropriations bill. The House approved the President's request of $16.7 million for cyber security research in FY 2006, a decrease of $1.3 million from the FY 2005 enacted level.
Here's a handy table showing the additions and cuts to the DHS S&T budget.
House Approved Version | ||||
| Program | enacted | |||
| Technology Development and Transfer | $0 | $10 | $10 | |
| Biological Countermeasures | $362 | $360 | -$3 | |
| Chemical Countermeasures | $102 | $90 | $37 | |
| Explosives Countermeasures | $15 | $55 | $35 | |
| Radiological and Nuclear countermeasures | $19 | $19 | -$104 | |
| Domestic Nuclear Detection Office | $227 | $127 | $127 | |
| Conventional Missions in Support of DHS | $94 | $80 | $25 | |
| Threat and Vulnerability, Testing and Assessment | $47 | $47 | -$19 | |
| Emerging Threats | $11 | $11 | $0 | |
| Standards | $36 | $36 | -$4 | |
| University Porgrams/Homeland Security Fellowship Programs | $64 | $64 | -$6 | |
| Cyber Security | $17 | $17 | -$1 | |
| Critical Infrastructure Protection | $21 | $36 | $9 | |
| Rapid Prototyping Program | $21 | $30 | -$46 | |
| Counter MANPADS | $110 | $110 | $49 | |
| Interoperability and Compatibility | $21 | $42 | $21 | |
| SAFETY Act | $6 | $10 | $0 | |
| Research and Development Consolidation | $117 | $117 | - | |
| Total, Research, Development, Acquisition, and Operations | $1,287 | $1,259 | $213 | |
There will be a couple of opportunities to address the cut to cyber security research as the bill moves through the appropriations process. The Senate has yet to act on its version of the bill. They've been briefed on the PITAC report, but it's not known whether they'll deviate much from the President's requested level for the program. This highlights the importance of advocacy efforts that target the President's budget request in addition to the congressional appropriations cycle, especially when the President and the congressional majority are all the same party....
Update: Cameron Wilson at USACM has a good post on the Dept. of Homeland Security Authorization Act (pdf), which is also likely to make it to the House floor this week. The bill creates a new Assistant Secretary for Cybersecurity within the department and authorizes $19 million worth of cyber security R&D within the S&T directorate, including "long-term research." In essence, the language authorizes spending that's already going on (see above), though having a higher authorization could make increasing the appropriation a little easier as the appropriations bill moves forward.