Uncertain US funding future

The Bush administration on Monday will unveil its budget request for Fiscal Year 2004, which begins October 1, even as legislators scramble to finish the budget for Fiscal Year 2003, which was supposed to have started four months ago. No one is predicting the Capitol Hill conferees will have an easy time of it since the House and Senate remain far apart on spending levels. And the new budget may well distract attention desperately needed to complete the long-overdue 2003 spending package. "There's no question this is going to be very difficult," said Pat White, director of legislative relations at the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB). "There's a wide disparity in terms of funding and priorities." The most optimistic congressional staffers believe conferees can finish in time for the President's Day recess starting Feb. 14, said Bob Palmer, minority staff director for the House Science Committee. Other observers are skeptical. "The conference may be a fairly contentious one and may go on for some time," predicted Pete Farnham, public affairs director for the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB). With Monday's announcement of the new budget colliding with the still-unfinished current budget, he said, "it's going to be an exciting time."Because the White House, the House, and the Senate have not agreed on spending proposals, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the National Science Foundation (NSF), and all other federal agencies except the Department of Defense (DOD) have been operating at Fiscal Year 2002 budget levels authorized through a series of continuing resolutions (CR). The latest CR expires Jan. 31 and has been reauthorized through Feb. 7. Additional extensions are deemed likely. The budget delay, now going into its fifth month, has been especially bothersome for NIH, which had been on track to receive a $3.8-billion increase as the final installment in its five-year budget doubling process. NIH's budget request for FY03 is $27.3 billion, a 16 percent increase over FY2002 levels. But since NIH has been forced to operate at level spending, some new initiatives have been placed on hold. However, the fact that most research project grants are disbursed in the latter half of the fiscal year has somewhat mitigated the delay.The latest appropriations measure from the House would give NIH $26.8 billion for FY 2003 while the Senate's omnibus spending measure would give NIH $27.2 billion. But a separate Senate-passed 2.9 percent across-the-board spending cut threatens to bring that amount down to $26.4 billion. Therein lies the challenge for House and Senate conferees. "I think there's reason for cautious optimism that we may come out okay, but the whole thing may blow up as well," Farnham warned.Under the revised Senate budget plan for FY 2003, most NIH institutes would receive increases of between four and eight percent for research activities. The exception is the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), the lead agency in expanded bioterrorism research, which would receive an increase of 43 percent to $3.6 billion for research, according to an analysis by Kei Koizumi, director of the R&D Budget and Policy Program at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).The Bush administration will use its original FY 2003 budget request as the comparison baseline for the FY 2004 numbers to be released Monday. With proposed overall discretionary spending increases targeted at four percent, the White House is expected to request a two percent increase for NIH in FY 2004, according to recent news leaks. But NIH needs a 10 percent increase, FASEB President Steven L. Teitelbaum told reporters Monday, to ensure that the progress accomplished during the five-year doubling process will continue.Such a raise seems highly unlikely. A two-percent increase for FY 2004 would add $540 million to NIH's coffers, bringing the agency's budget to around $27.8 billion. A good portion of this increase might well come as part of the new initiative Bush calls "Project BioShield," a 10-year, $6 billion program to develop and produce "next generation" vaccines and countermeasures against smallpox, anthrax, Botulinum toxin, Ebola, and plague. During his State of the Union address Monday evening, Bush said Project BioShield would be conducted jointly by the new Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Health and Human Services (presumably NIH). If funded at roughly $600 million a year, that amount could well represent the anticipated increase for NIH, Koizumi said. But he cautioned against speculation until the numbers come out. FASEB's Pat White is taking a pragmatic approach to all the uncertainty. "No matter what happens, I think we'll be in a position to argue that if we don't complete the doubling this year, we ought to be made whole next year," he said. A 10 percent increase, he conceded, "is going to be a very, very hard sell."

Uncertain US funding future

2004 budget due Monday, but 2003 spending bills still far apart with more delays likely.

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