1995 Budget Draws Praise -- And Concerns

Sidebar:Federal Research Funding Though many express general satisfaction with allocations, some observers warn of tough funding battles ahead The 1995 federal budget process has produced its traditional share of beneficiaries and victims, champions and critics. Some, for example, are heartened by a 14 percent funding increase for the National Science Foundation, while others view a modest budget raise for the National Institutes of Health as woefully inadequate. In general, many officials of scientific associations and other science-policy watchers are expressing satisfaction with this year's congressional appropriations for research funding. Several other observers, however, see in this and other recent budget go-rounds indications that do not bode well for the future. They caution that the U.S. research community will need to redouble its lobbying efforts and push for sustained support in the next budget year, in view of increasingly tight caps on federal discretionary spending. Rep. George E. Brown, Jr. (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee, warns that the final budget numbers may represent a more fundamental problem. He fears that the Clinton administration and Congress may be retreating from key long-range goals--such as achieving a 50-50 balance of civilian and military research. "Overall--and I try to keep everything in perspective here, with regard to the total investments in R&D--I'm not very happy," Brown said at a news conference. "Military R&D continued to go up. When the president requested less in real dollars for NASA, he requested more in real dollars [for the Pentagon]--and ended up getting more." Singing The Budget's Praises By the time lawmakers left Washington this month for their election-campaign recess, Congress had passed and sent to the White House for Clinton's signature eight fiscal 1995 appropriations bills, including money for research. NSF got a substantial boost, raising its total budget to $3.396 billion for the 1995 fiscal year, which began on October 1. This includes $250 million for modernizing or building new academic research facilities--more than double this year's allocation of $105 million. Jack Crowley, head of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Washington office, calls this expanded university infrastructure program "the most encouraging step in research-facilities financing in more than 15 years." By contrast, Senate and House appropriators approved only a 3.6 percent increase for the National Institutes of Health, setting its total FY 1995 appropriation at $11.334 billion--$138 million less than the administration's budget request. In recent years, Congress generally has added to the White House's budget for NIH funding. Despite the tight budget for NIH overall, Congress voted a 20.4 percent increase for the National Center for Human Genome Research, the agency's component of the Human Genome Project (HGP), boosting the center's 1995 funding level to $153 million. Francis Collins, director of the genome center, notes that most of the additional monies will go to a new intramural research program at NIH. "I am enormously pleased with that vote of confidence, from the administration and the Congress, that allowed that to happen," he says. But Collins adds that HGP, generally, remains underfunded. "People think the genome is the place to go if they need money, and that's not the case," he says. "We are seriously strapped. We are living with a budget that's about 60 percent of what the original planners of the project proposed five years ago. And yet we're being held to a standard of achieving those same goals that we thought we would need a much larger budget for. So we are managing, as one does, in a difficult time." Another conspicuous winner on Capitol Hill was the Commerce Department's National Institute of Standards and Technology. NIST's Advanced Technology Program--which focuses on government-industry cooperative R&D efforts--received a 116 percent increase, up to $431 million, while the agency's overall budget grew by 64 percent, up to $855 million. Officials of several scientific societies and associations interviewed for this article maintain that both the administration and Congress are doing as much as they can for research funding, given the overall tight budget climate. "I think the research budgets fared relatively well," says Cornelius J. Pings, president of the Association of American Universities, which represents major U.S. research universities. He calls the 3.6 percent increase for NIH a reflection of "fiscal reality," adding, "I don't detect any necessary waning of commitment to the importance of biomedical research." Looking to the future, Pings foresees "an ongoing sound commitment to investment in science and engineering, in basic research, from both the administration and the Congress." Clifford J. Gabriel, executive director of the American Institute of Biological Sciences, says he is also basically content with the fiscal 1995 funding levels, given the situation. "I'm just pleased that we can keep our head above water," he says. Gabriel comments that he "would have liked to have seen more of the increase at NSF go towards the research budget, rather than the facilities budget. Overall, that's probably my biggest concern. . . . It doesn't do much good to have nice new buildings without any scientists working in them." He rates the Clinton administration's performance in living up to its espoused commitments to strengthening U.S. civilian research as satisfactory. "I think it's doing as well as it can do under the current budgetary circumstances," Gabriel says. Sour Notes But not everyone--in and outside of government--feels the same way. Rep. John Porter (R-Ill.), the ranking Republican on the House Appropriations Committee subcommittee for labor, health and human services, and education, complains about NIH's allocation in the current budget: "In this appropriations bill, I'm very disappointed with the numbers." Noting that he is "very concerned" that such small increases could become a trend for the future, Porter says, "Last year we managed to have a 6 percent increase, which I think is the minimal level." Samuel C. Silverstein, president of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB), based in Bethesda, Md., and a faculty member at Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons, echoes Porter's discouraging assessment of the modest increment for NIH. "The [Senate-House] conference level [of 3.6 percent added funding] was all that we could get," Silverstein says. "However, FASEB had recommended an 8.9 percent increase, because we believed that this was the funding level NIH needed to keep pace with the rapid growth in biomedical research opportunities." Pentagon financing of basic research at universities emerged as a heated issue in congressional wrangling over a defense appropriations bill providing about $35 billion for research, development, testing, and evaluation, the majority of which isdedicated to weapons development and defense-related research. Contending that academic research shouldn't be increasing at a time when military programs overall are being pared down, Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), chairman of the House Appropriations Committee's defense subcommittee, pushed through an amendment that would have sliced $900 million from the proposed $1.5 billion Pentagon allocation for university research. In conference committee, lawmakers reduced the cut to $200 million, funding the appropriation at $1.3 billion. Murtha's move was widely viewed as a rejoinder to Rep. Brown, Congress' leading expert on science, who has campaigned to curb so-called earmarks--channeling funds to particular pet proj-ects--inserted by lawmakers into defense and other appropriations bills. Earmarks are generally blamed, especially by scientists, for reductions in basic research funding, such as the defense allocations for universities. Also taking a somewhat more gloomy view of the budget outcome than many of his science society colleagues is Robert Park, public affairs director of the American Physical Society (APS). High-energy physicists, who represent a substantial APS constituency, are still striving to recuperate following last year's congressional vote to kill the superconducting supercollider (SSC). "Well, I guess they could have been worse," Park comments about the 1995 appropriations. "It is by no stretch a good year. But it is not as disastrous a year as some people had anticipated." The Department of Energy's allocation for general science and research was sliced from $1.615 billion in 1994 to $984 million for the new fiscal year--reflecting mainly reduced costs associated with shutting down the SSC, along with other program cuts. Park says his organization remains opposed to the space station--generally perceived to be the "big-science" initiative retained by Congress at the expense of the SSC--but has largely given up hope of stopping the megaproject in view of continuing support for it on Capitol Hill. "It's hard to maintain opposition to something year to year when each year it keeps winning," he observes. "I think the feeling in the scientific community is that we took our best shot--and at this point there's not much point in opposing it any further." Congress voted a total of $14.397 billion for NASA in fiscal 1995, down by $110 million from the previous year. Spending for space station R&D was set at $1.890 billion, a 2.6 percent decrease, while overall funding for human space flight was trimmed by 7.9 percent, down to $5.574 billion. NASA science, aeronautics, and technology programs got a 2 percent increase, up to $5.901 billion. Rep. Brown, a longtime proponent of the space station, said at the September 26 news conference that the project's success in winning renewed funding despite the budget crunch was "very heartening to me." However, the California Democrat expressed concern over what he depicted as adverse trends in research funding. In a technology white paper issued last year and a White House report on science policy released in August (B. Reppert, The Scientist, April 5, 1993, page 1; B. Reppert, The Scientist, Aug. 22, 1994, page 1), the Clinton administration set ambitious goals--including commitments to shift toward a 50-50 balance between military and civilian R&D funding, as well as to boost U.S. civilian R&D up to the levels of Japan, Germany, and other competitors on the world market. But Brown contended at the conference that "the goals set forth [in the administration policy papers], which are very noble and I commend them highly, we're retreating from. We are no closer to, for example, equal military vs. civilian research and development. We are retreating from the goal ... of equaling the investments of our major international competitors of somewhere around 3 percent of GNP." Another disturbing aspect of this year's budget process, according to many observers, was that Congress, following a pattern that has prevailed over the past several years, again failed to adopt new authorizing legislation for NSF. Other authorization bills that died in congressional gridlock included measures to specifically reauthorize programs for NASA, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Energy's national laboratories, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Administrative Perspective The White House view of how its budget fared in Congress was similar to that expressed by some scientific society leaders--one of cautious optimism. A senior official of the administration's Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) says that "on the whole, we're very pleased with how the appropriations process turned out this year. That doesn't mean that we got all we wanted--not by a long shot. But ... in the end, there was very strong funding for R&D across a number of areas." However, the official, speaking on condition of anonymity, cautions that because of the overall budget squeeze, the climate for R&D funding will be increasingly difficult for fiscal 1996. "The caps [on discretionary spending] are tough--and they aren't going to get any easier next year," he says. The OSTP staffer adds: "The most important lesson out of this is that, yes, we can maintain science and technology funding in this time of budget austerity. But it is going to take an increasingly better communications job"--by the White House and federal R&D agencies--to reach both Congress and the voters, the "stockholders" in the U.S. research enterprise. In addition, he says, "It is going to take a lot better communication from the science and technology community--again, to the stockholders of the enterprise--about why these investments are worthwhile investments in terms of real issues that matter to people." Barton Reppert is a freelance science writer based in Gaithersburg, Md.

1995 Budget Draws Praise -- And Concerns

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