In our continuing series following the Biden Administration’s Fiscal Year 2025 (FY25) budget request, we close out with a roundup of an assortment of Federal research agencies. These include the National Institute of Standards & Technology (NIST), National Institutes of Health (NIH), and NASA.
As with the previous agencies we have looked at, we are comparing the President’s FY25 request to the final budget numbers in Fiscal Year 2024, approved by Congress in March. The agencies did not have finalized budgets for FY24 when they created their justifications, and instead compared their requested budgets to FY23. Please be aware of this as you read the original budget documents.
First, let’s look at NIST. This agency’s budget has become quite difficult to assess because Congress has used it for a large number of Congressionally directed funding (ie: earmarks) over the last several budget cycles, making a year-to-year comparison hard. We are comparing top line budget numbers here, though we provide some contexts where we can.
The top line for NIST is $1.50 billion, an increase of $40 million over FY24, or 2.7 percent. The institutes’ Science and Technical Research and Services (STRS) account, where the majority of the agency’s research is housed, would see a decrease of 9.7 percent; going from $1.08 billion in FY24 to $975 million in FY25. STRS’s budget line is a good example the difficulties of making year-to-year comparison due to the earmark situation. When excluding earmarks, the program is actually increasing 13.7 percent (FY24 Final at $857 million vs FY25 PBR at $975 million).
In terms of what the agency is planning on doing with its funding, artificial intelligence, quantum information sciences, and laboratory maintenance figure heavily in the Administration’s plans. The agency is planning on increasing funding for AI research by $48 million and QIS by $14 million. With regard to AI, these funds will allow the agency to, “conduct…research; develop and conduct testing, evaluation, verification, and validation (TEVV) methods; develop technical guidance; facilitate development of standards; and implement best practices and frameworks.” With QIS, the extra funding will allow NIST to, “accelerating and expanding R&D efforts that underpin continued innovation and competitiveness for the rapidly growing U.S. quantum industry – including associated domestic supply chains –while meeting novel security threats posed by quantum technologies.”
While CRA has not historically tracked the “Construction of Research Facilities” (CRF) budget line, it is becoming an increasingly important part of NIST. This is due to the significant maintenance backlog that the agency is contending with. The Biden Administration is taking note and CRF received a significant infusion of funds, increasing the budget by 255 percent after earmarks are excluding. Since a maintenance backlog does not disappear in a year, we can expect CRF to continue to get attention from the agency for the next several years, assuming Congress provides funds to cut into the backlog. The research community needs to take note of this because it could have a long-term impact on the research accounts.
FY23
FY24 Final
FY25 PBR
$ Change
% Change
NIST Total
$1.63B
$1.46B
$1.50B
+$40M
+2.7%
STRS
$953M
$1.08B
$975M
-$105M
-9.7%
The next agency we look at is NASA. Under the President’s plan, the space agency would receive a 2.0 percent increase, going from $24.9 billion in FY24 to $25.4 billion in FY25. While that is an increase against FY24, it is flat funding when compared to Fiscal Year 2023. As for NASA Science, which handles the research funding at the agency, would see a better percentage increase: 3.3 percent, going from $7.33 billion in FY24 to $7.57 billion in FY25. However, that increase would only partially restore the cuts made in the final FY24 budget to the program.
Unfortunately, the details of the NASA Science program are not great. While it does get an increase at the top line, there is quite a bit of movement of money within the subaccounts. Earth Sciences, Astrophysics, and Biological & Physical Sciences are increased, while Planetary Science and Heliophysics are decreased, as compared to FY23 levels. Much of these changes are due to the agency reorganizing or cancelling major missions. For example, the Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission is a major part of Planetary Science’s budget and has been mired in delays and cost overruns, and is being threatened with cancellation by Congress. The Administration is providing funding to the mission to enable, “internal assessment of mission architecture options to be completed to address mission cost overruns.”
FY23
FY24 Final
FY25 PBR
$ Change
% Change
NASA Total
$25.4B
$24.9B
$25.4B
+$500M
+2.0%
Science
$7.80B
$7.33B
$7.57B
+$240M
+3.3%
Finally, we come to the National Institutes of Health. Under the President’s plan, the agency would go from $48.68 billion in FY24 to $50.12 billion in FY25, an increase of $1.44 billion or 3.0 percent. Meanwhile, ARPA-H, or the Advanced Research Project Agency, Health, would be flat funded at $1.50 billion.
The flat funding of ARPA-H is surprising, given its popularity in Congress and that it has been an Administration priority in the previous fiscal years. Instead, the Administration is focusing on their Cancer Moonshot program and a new “White House Initiative on Women’s Health Research,” which proposes to, “better integrate women’s health within the Federal research portfolio and catalyze significant private and philanthropic commitments to increase funding for women’s health research.” The initiative will also, “double existing funding for the Office of Research on Women’s Health at NIH.”
ARPA-H is continuing to focus its research efforts within “Increasing Accessibility and Expanding Scale,” “Artificial Intelligence, and Health Ecosystem Cybersecurity,” and the afore mentioned Cancer Moonshot program.
FY23
FY24 Final
FY25 PBR
$ Change
% Change
NIH Total
$47.50B
$48.68B
$50.12B
+$1.44B
+3.0%
ARPA-H
$1.5B
$1.5B
$1.5B
$0
0%
As with the other research accounts we’ve profiled, it’s worth tempering any expectations, positive or negative. It is already expected that Congress will not finish FY25 by the time the current fiscal year ends, which is September 30th. In fact, the expectation here in Washington is the budget won’t be voted on until after the November Presidential election at the earliest, and likely not until the 2025 calendar year. And the outcome of that election will heavily influence how FY25 is finalized. Any final numbers for these agencies are guesswork at the moment.
Next steps in the FY25 budget process are for each chamber of Congress to come up with their individual funding plans. That process should begin soon. We’ll have updates as those bills become public; keep checking back for more information.
In our continuing series following the Biden Administration’s Fiscal Year 2025 (FY25) budget request, we turn to the Department of Defense (DOD). In what has become a grim ritual, the Biden Administration has submitted another terrible request for the defense research accounts, as it has for the lastthreeyears. This time there is at least some reasoning behind the actions.
As we have pointed out with NSF’s and DOE’s budget request, the Administration is heavily constrained by the requirements of the Fiscal Responsibility Act, agreed to by President Biden and then House Speaker McCarthy in May of 2023. That law splits all federal spending into two pots of money for Fiscal Year 2025, one for Defense and the other for NonDefense. It then limits the increase of each pot to 1 percent for FY25. This has impacts for entire Defense Department budget; in fact, the Defense Secretary has said the entire Defense Department request for this year constitutes a zero-growth budget. As with the just passed FY24 budget, this creates a harsh budgetary environment.
Before we get into the budget numbers, a little refresher about the DOD research accounts: the DOD’s Science and Technology (DOD S&T) program is made up of three accounts: 6.1 (basic research), 6.2 (applied research), and 6.3 (advanced technology development). These accounts are themselves made up of individual accounts for each of the three services (Army, Navy, and Air Force), as well as a Defense Wide account. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is a section under the Defense Wide account.
All three of DOD S&T’s accounts do badly under the President’s budget plan. Basic Research (6.1), which is the main Defense Department supporter of fundamental research at US universities, gets the smallest cut of 6.8 percent; going from $2.63 billion in FY24 to $2.45 billon under the Administration’s plan (a cut of $180 million). The details within the 6.1 accounts do not improve the situation: the Army, Navy, and Air Force’s “University Research Initiative” subaccounts are cut at 8.8, 11.4, and 22.7 percent compared to their FY24 levels, respectively.
The Applied Research (6.2) account is hit even harder, receiving a 23.6 percent cut; going from $7.59 billion in FY24 to $5.80 billion under the Administration’s FY25 framework, a loss of $1.80 billion. Finally, Advanced Technology Development (6.3) would also receive a significant cut, going from $11.29 billion in FY24 to $9.00 billion in FY25, a cut of $2.29 billion, or 20.3 percent.
DARPA is the only bright spot among the defense accounts, escaping any proposed cuts. The agency would see a good increase of 6.1 percent, going from $4.12 billion in FY24 to $4.37 billion in FY25, an increase of $250 million.
FY23
FY24
FY25 PBR
$ Change
% Change
DOD 6.1
$2.92B
$2.63B
$2.45B
-$180M
-6.8%
DOD 6.2
$7.80B
$7.59B
$5.80B
-$1.80B
-23.6%
DOD 6.3
$11.71B
$11.29B
$9.00B
-$2.29B
-20.3%
DARPA
$4.06B
$4.12B
$4.37B
+$250M
+6.1%
What’s going on here? There are two ways of looking at these budgets. Unfortunately, neither view is good news by itself and they are quite terrible when viewed together. The first way to look at them is the way the Pentagon leadership plans their budgets, which is from budget request to budget request. Put simply, no country can plan a workable national defense strategy around the vagueness of a legislative budget cycle. When we look at the FY24 budget request and compare it to the FY25 budget request, as the Pentagon’s planners do, it shows that even this year’s request is a reduction:
6.1 – reduced by 1.1 percent
6.2 – reduced by 3.7 percent
6.3 – reduced by 4.0 percent
DARPA – reduced by 0.4 percent.
This shows that the defense research accounts don’t appear to be a priority for the Defense Department leadership.
The other way to look at them is one we talk about almost every year: budget gamesmanship. Namely that money is pulled by DOD leaders from what is seen as a Congressional priority (i.e. research funding) to put toward something else that does not have the same support. If the scheme works, Congress puts money back into R&D and the moved money “sticks” elsewhere in the DOD budget. It’s not a new strategy, as the last couple of presidential administrations have done it.
The obvious problem with this plan is, what if Congress doesn’t put the money back? You get what happened in the final FY24 budget, namely hard budgetary cuts. It only goes to show that to start at a bad budget request is a good way to end with a bad budget for the year.
As CRA has done for the past several years, we will continue to make the case, in concert with our friends and allies in the other scientific fields and higher education institutions, for the importance of these Federal investments in defense research for our national security.
With the difficult political year ahead, and the zero-sum budget environment we are in, this will be a long process. As with the other research agencies we’ve highlighted, the partisan fight over the budget is shaping up to be particularly bad this year, especially with the Presidential election in November. We’ll have to let the budget process play out more before we know what will happen; please check back for more updates.
In our continuing series analyzing the President’s Fiscal Year 2025 budget request to Congress, we turn to the Department of Energy. Specifically, we are looking at the two key parts of DOE that are of concern to the computing community: the Office of Science (SC), home to most of the agency’s basic research support, and ARPA-E, or the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy.
Readers should note that when the Department of Energy prepared their budget request for this year, they did not have a completed FY24 budget to compare their request against. That means their budget documents will compare this year’s request against the FY23 budget, which was the last approved budget they had. Since Congress has now completed Fiscal Year 2024, CRA is able to do a FY24 Final to FY25 Request comparison.
The President’s FY25 request for DOE SC is $8.60 billion, which is an increase of $360 million, or 4.4 percent, compared to the approved FY24 level of $8.24 billion. The requested budget goes to, “implement the Administration’s objectives to advance bold, transformational leaps in U.S. Science and Technology (S&T), build a diverse and inclusive workforce of the future, and ensure America remains the global S&T leader for generations to come.” Additionally, the request, “increases investments in…basic research on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML), climate change and clean energy, including additional funding for the SC Energy Earthshots, and efforts to support underserved communities through the Reaching a New Energy Sciences Workforce (RENEW) and Funding for Accelerated, Inclusive Research (FAIR) initiatives.”
Within the Office of Science account, the Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) program – home to most of SCs computing research efforts – would fare well. The program would be funded at $1.15 billion, which is an increase of $130 million, or 12.7 percent, over FY24 levels. Unlike the last several years of budget requests for ASCR, the Exascale Computing Project line-item has completed its work and is no longer a line item within the program’s budget. The $77 million that was in the Exascale line item is now transferred over to the ASCR research budget line, along with an additional $69 million. There is also the High Performance Data Facility construction line item, which receives $16 million for the year. All three of those account for the all of the budgetary line items within ASCR’s budget. In terms of research areas, ASCR’s request focuses heavily on AI, exascale computing, and quantum as topics of importance to the program.
As for ARPA-E, the agency would see a slight cut for FY25. Under the President’s plan ARPA-E would receive $450 million, a decrease of $10 million over last year, or 2.2 percent. The request has, “an emphasis on maintaining a healthy portfolio of projects,” which include, “a growing focus on additional scale-up of the most promising projects that have demonstrated success in technical development, project management, and definition of commercial pathways.”
ARPA-E’s poor budget request is likely an outcome of two things. First, ARPA-E escaped the last budgetary year with a relatively small cut; DOE may have expected a worse budget for FY24 and expected a FY25 to be an improvement.
But it’s more likely because of the budgetary constraints that the Administration is working under from the May 2023 budget agreement with Congress, known as the Fiscal Responsibility Act. As a reminder, that law splits all federal spending into two pots, Defense and NonDefense, and limits the increase of those pots of spending to 1 percent for FY25. As with the just passed FY24 budget, this creates a harsh, zero-sum budgetary environment. The Administration is likely prioritizing the fundamental sciences in the Office of Science accounts and that comes with a relatively flat funding for the applied research at APRA-E. In short, tough budget decisions.
FY23
FY24
FY25 PBR
$ Change
% Change
DOE SC Total
$8.10B
$8.24B
$8.60B
+$360M
+4.4%
ASCR
$1.07B
$1.02B
$1.15B
+$130M
+12.7%
ARPA-E
$470M
$460M
$450M
-$10M
-2.2%
What are the next steps for the budget? Technically the process goes to Congress in order for both chambers to work out their own funding plans. However, it is important to keep our expectations in check for this year. It is already expected that Congress will not finish FY25 on time (by October 1st). In fact, the expectation here in Washington is the budget won’t be voted on until after the November Presidential election at the earliest, and likely not until the 2025 calendar year. And the outcome of that election will heavily influence how FY25 is finalized. But even without the timeline issues, the constraints on the budget by the aforementioned Fiscal Responsibility Act will create significant problems for the science policy community and the nation’s researchers this year.
There is still a lot of time between now and the end of the fiscal year; we will have to let events play out before we know for certain what will happen. Please keep checking the CRA Policy Boog for more updates.
At the end of last week, Congress passed into law the remaining appropriation bills for the second half of the Fiscal Year 2024 federal budget. As regular readers will recall, earlier this month Congress passed the initial batch of funding legislation, which contained the budgets for the National Science Foundation (NSF), Department of Energy Office of Science, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and NASA. Those agencies received flat funding or significant cuts to their budgets. And, unfortunately, that trend continues with this second batch of funding legislation.
In terms of covered research agencies, this current set of bills includes the budgets for the Department of Defense (DOD) research accounts and the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Let’s get into the details:
Department of Defense S&T
FY23
FY24 PBR
FY24 House
FY24 Senate
FY24 Final
$ Change
% Change
DOD 6.1
$2.92B
$2.48B
$2.53B
$3.22B
$2.63B
-$290M
-10%
DOD 6.2
$7.80B
$6.01B
$6.73B
$7.14B
$7.60B
-$200M
-2.6%
DOD 6.3
$11.71B
$9.33B
$10.14B
$10.00B
$11.29B
-$420M
-3.6%
DARPA
$4.06B
$4.39B
$4.12B
$4.09B
$4.12B
+$60M
+1.5%
As with NSF’s final FY24 budget, there is no sugarcoating the news with the Defense research accounts: these are bad budgets. However, from a paradoxical viewpoint, they are generally better than what the Administration requested in March of last year. Before going into that, let’s get into the specific budget numbers.
All three of DOD S&T’s accounts do badly relative to their previous year’s budgets. Basic Research (6.1), which is the main Defense Department supporter of fundamental research at US universities, received a big cut of 10 percent; going from $2.92 billion in the FY23 to $2.63 billon in FY24, a cut of $290 million. The details within the 6.1 accounts paint a pretty grime picture: the Army, Navy, and Air Force’s “University Research Initiative” subaccounts are cut at 20, 27, and 10 percent, respectively.
The Applied Research (6.2) account is hit with a cut too, though not as significant. The 6.2 account received a 2.6 percent cut, going from $7.80 billion in FY23 to $7.60 billion in FY24, a loss of $200 million. Finally, Advanced Technology Development (6.3) would also receive a cut, going from $11.71 billion in FY23 to $11.29 billion in FY24, a cut of $420 million, or 3.6 percent.
DARPA is the only bright spot among the defense accounts, escaping any proposed cuts but getting flat funded. The agency would see a 1.5 percent, going from $4.06 billion in FY23 to $4.12 billion in FY24, an increase of $60 million.
Here is the paradoxical part: when compared against the President’s requested budgets (PBR), these accounts received increases (except DARPA which would receive a cut relative to the PBR). Here are the percent differences when comparing FY24 Final vs FY24 PBR:
DOD 6.1: +26 percent
DOD 6.2: +21 percent
DOD 6.3: +21 percent
DARPA: -6.1 percent
In many ways this is a reflection of two things. First, the President’s requested budget for the DOD research accounts was quite bad. And second, Congress upped the accounts from those requested budgets. So, from Congress’ perspective, they did these accounts a favor. This only demonstrates the importance of the Administration submitting a good request to start the process; otherwise, it’s easy to be in a budgetary hole that one never gets out of.
National Institutes of Health
FY23
FY24 PBR
FY24 House
FY24 Senate
FY24 Final
$ Change
% Change
NIH Total
$47.50B
$48.60B
$44.78B
$49.22B
$48.68B
+$1.18B
+2.5%
ARPA-H
$1.50B
$2.50B
$500M
$1.50B
$1.50B
$0
0
Finally, we come to the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The agency would be a relative winner in FY24, escaping cuts but effectively flat funded. At the topline budget, the agency would go from $47.50 billion in FY23 to $48.68 billion in FY24, an increase of $1.18 billion or 2.5 percent. Additionally, ARPA-H (or Advanced Research Project Agency, Health) would be flat funded, receiving the same amount in FY24 that it received in FY23: $1.50 billion.
Conclusion
These budgets have already passed Congress and been signed into law by President Biden. For better or worse, Fiscal Year 2024 is finally complete.
As with the previous set of FY24 research budgets, this is not an ideal outcome to this budgetary year. In fact, FY24 has been a particularly zero-sum environment and that is reflected in the research accounts. Given the push to cut overall federal spending by certain factions within Congress, this outcome is not entirely unexpected. Keep in mind, House Republicans had adopted the position, at the beginning of 2023, to cut overall Federal spending to FY22 levels. A grim final budget for this year is not unexpected, but this is much worse than what either the House or Senate Appropriations Committees had been telegraphing during the year.
CRA has publicly voiced its concerns and frustrations with these budgets on behalf of the computing and information technology research community. We have pointed out the likely negative impacts these budgets will have on the country’s research enterprise, with the reduced quantity of research, the number of researchers, and the number of students educated in key fundamental areas of computing and other fields of discovery. It will also have negative impacts in areas of significant national interest like artificial intelligence, quantum computing, high-performance computing, and cyber security. All while our international competitors are doubling down on their investments in R&D. CRA will continue to make the case that the next fiscal year, Fiscal Year 2025, which the process is already underway, can’t follow down the road of cuts as far as research is concerned.
The Biden Administration released their Fiscal Year 2025 requested budget on March 11th. As we have done in years past, the CRA Policy Blog will write a series of posts analyzing the assorted agency requested budgets that are important to the computing research community. First up is the agency that supports 78 percent of all Federally-supported basic research in computer science at academic institutions: the National Science Foundation. The Biden Administration proposes another strong budget for NSF. However, this year is a bit different. With a particularly bitter funding cut in Fiscal Year 2024, combined with the Fiscal Responsibility Act requirements on the overall Federal budget, the Administration is heavily constrained in their request. A perfect example of that is the fact that this year’s request for the agency is over a billion dollars less than what was submitted to Congress in NSF’s FY24 request.
A general note: NSF’s budget request was prepared before Congress finished its work on the agency’s FY24 budget. With that in mind, in the agency’s budget documents, you will see they compared the President’s request to FY23 (ie: the last year they had approved funding). Since CRA now has some, but not all, of the numbers for FY24, we will compare the President’s request against that. There are exceptions, most notably the assorted RRA directorates. Congress does not typically fund at that level, leaving it to NSF to decide how funding is exactly distributed. Since the agency has only had a finalized budget for a few weeks, we can only do a FY23 to FY25 request comparison for those parts of the agency.
Under the Administration’s FY25 plan, NSF would see a 12.1 percent increase compared to their FY24 budget approved by Congress earlier this month. NSF would go from $9.06 billion in FY24 to $10.2 billion in FY25, an increase of $1.14 billion. Research and Related Activities (R&RA), the subaccount that contains the funding for research grants, would see a sizable part of that increase, going from $7.18 billion in FY24 to $8.05 billion in FY25, a plus up of $870 million (or 12.1 percent). The STEM Education Directorate (EDU), which contains the agency’s education programs, would also see a sizable increase of $130 million, going from $1.17 billion in FY24 to $1.30 billion under the President’s FY25 plan; that’s an increase of 11.1 percent.
The requested budget would allow NSF to fund an estimated 36,200 research grants in FY25 (37,000 were funded in FY23), allowing for a 27 percent funding rate. The agency estimates that its activities will support a total of 357,100 people in FY25; that number includes senior researchers, other professionals, postdos, graduate students, and undergrads.
FY23
FY24
FY25 PBR
$ Change
% Change
NSF Total
$9.90B
$9.06B
$10.20B
+$1.14B
+12.6%
R&RA
$7.80B
$7.18B
$8.05B
+$870M
+12.1%
EDU
$1.37B
$1.17B
$1.30B
+$130M
+11.1%
CISE
$1.04B
TBD
$1.07B
—
—
TIP
$664M
TBD
$900M
—
—
CISE Directorate:
The Computer and Information Science and Engineering Directorate (CISE), located within R&RA, and the home for most of the computing research support at NSF, will receive a significant increase. It would go from an estimate of $1.04 billion in FY23 to $1.07 billion for FY25, an increase of $30 million or 2.9 percent. We do not yet have a budgetary number for CISE for FY24.
The CISE Directorate continues to, “play a leadership role,” in many NSF-wide initiatives, such as, “seminal investments in AI, advanced computing systems and services, quantum information science (QIS), advanced communications technologies, advanced manufacturing, semiconductors and microelectronics, biotechnology, and cybersecurity.”
As should surprise no one, artificial intelligence holds a prominent spot in the directorate’s request. CISE will continue to support the pilot NAIRR program with an initial budget of $30 million. The program is to, “amplify efforts across the federal government to cultivate AI innovation and advance trustworthy AI.” Additionally, the directorate will, “continued support for the National AI Research Institutes.” Tasked with establishing two additional AI institutes in the Biden Administration’s October executive order on AI, the directorate will also, “significantly broaden participation in AI research, education, and workforce development through capacity development projects such as ExpandAI, through CISE core investments, and through partnerships within the National AI Research Institutes ecosystem.”
In terms of the broadening participation and workforce development space, CISE, “in alignment with an agency-wide emphasis on Creating Opportunities Everywhere…will continue to invest in a broad suite of activities to support broadening participation in research and education.” For example, “the Broadening Participation in Computing Alliances (BPC-A) will serve as broad coalitions of institutions of higher education, K-12 schools, government, industry, professional societies, and other not-for-profit organizations that design and carry out comprehensive programs addressing underrepresentation in the computing and information science disciplines.” Additionally, the directorate will broaden participation in computing by, “increasing engagement in…research projects from MSIs through the CISE-MSI program and will emphasize education and training of more U.S. based students from diverse backgrounds through CISE Graduate Fellowships (CSGrad4US).” CSGrad4US is a CRA managed program that aims to increase the number of diverse, domestic graduate students pursuing research and innovation careers in the CISE fields: computer science, computer engineering, or information science.
Other major investments in the CISE request are Advance Wireless Research and Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace (SaTC). With regard to the wireless research, the directorate will, “continue to invest in research in advanced wireless networks, building on its track record of enabling early-stage successes in 5G through ground- breaking millimeter-wave research,” and, “will accelerate research in areas with potential significant impact on emerging Next-Generation (NextG) wireless and mobile communications, networking, sensing, and computing systems, with a focus on greatly improving the resiliency and intelligence of such networked systems” With regard to SaTC, CISE will invest in, “current and emerging areas of importance for security and privacy,” including, “the application of AI to security, security and resilience of AI systems, security implications of quantum computation and communication, information integrity, and critical infrastructure security.” The directorate will also, “fund programs that strengthen the national cybersecurity workforce pipeline through education, K-12 programs, and funding to universities and colleges.”
TIP Directorate:
The Directorate for Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships, or TIP Directorate, enjoys continued priority in the President’s budget plans with a requested budget of $900 million for FY25, a 36 percent increase over its budget estimate for Fiscal Year 2023. We do not yet have a budgetary number for TIP for FY24.
TIP continues to receive special attention in the President’s budget roll out, as it figures heavily in the Administration’s priorities. In the president’s fuller budget plans, TIP is called out to as key to, “increase(ing) investments to translate the results of basic research into practical applications and processes that can benefit the Nation.” Within NSF’s justification document, TIP, “aims to usher in a new era for American innovation, accelerating research to impact and enhancing job and economic growth and national security for decades to come.” With that in mind, the directorate aligns its programs with three pillars: “nurtures new and diverse innovation ecosystems throughout” the nation; advance, “technology development across the range of key technology focus areas specified in the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022;” and create, “opportunities for everyone to engage in the nation’s R&D enterprise.”
With regard to the first pillar, nurturing new and diverse innovation ecosystems, the NSF Regional Innovation Engines (NSF Engines) features heavily. Tasked with, “catalyzing place-based innovation to spur economic and job growth,” particularly in places in the country that have, “not benefited from the technology and innovation booms of the last several decades.” The Engines program awarded the initial 10 awards spanning 18 states in January. Additionally, of the initial awards, “two are based in EPSCoR jurisdictions and nine include partners in an EPSCoR jurisdiction; nine include minority-serving institutions and all ten include community colleges; and four are led by industry and nonprofits.”
TIP also, “accelerates the translation of fundamental science and engineering discoveries into innovative new technologies and solutions.” Within this space, the directorate, “optimizes the historic NSF Lab-to-Market Platform, allowing researchers to pursue additional prototyping, demonstration, and scale-up work.” It also introduces, “new translation pathways…facilitating the adoption of NSF-funded research results as secure open-source ecosystems.” The TIP Directorate also, “supports the establishment and operation of testbeds to advance development, integration, deployment, and demonstration of breakthroughs in the key technology focus areas. TIP will also make major investments in artificial intelligence, quantum information sciences, advanced manufacturing, advanced wireless research, clean energy technology, and biotechnology; all these areas will receive significant increases in support, compared to their FY23 budgets.
Finally, the TIP Directorate, “creates opportunities for everyone to engage in the nation’s R&D enterprise.” It does this by working with, “academia, state, local, and tribal governments, industry, and other educational partners to provide practical experiences to diverse learners at every stage of education, from first-time job seekers to experienced workers.”
Conclusions:
For another year, President Biden has shown confidence in NSF and proposed a good budget for the agency. But the optimism of this year’s request should be tempered by the bad budget that precedes it. And it is important to keep expectations in check, as the political situation this year makes it highly unlikely that Congress will finish a budget on time, or even in this calendar year. The going view in Washington right now is that any final FY25 budget will arrive well after the election, with an endgame heavily influenced by the outcome of that election. It’s likely to be another long, difficult year. Please keep checking back for more updates.
Last week, the Biden Administration released a high-level overview of their $7.3 trillion budget request for Fiscal Year 2025 (FY25). As has happened the last several years, the documents released contain only a few specific budgetary numbers and details. The document serves more as a summary of the President’s priorities for the assorted Executive branch departments and agencies. More detailed requests from some, but not all, agencies have been released, with more expected this week or next. As CRA has done in years past, as we dig into the details of agencies’ budget request, we will post our analysis to the Policy Blog.
One general note: the Biden Administration makes clear on the first page that this document was prepared before any FY24 funding legislation was passed into law. Therefore, the few comparisons that are made in the document were against previous fiscal years, mostly against FY23. Since we now have some (but not all) of the Fiscal Year 2024 accounts settled, CRA will be able to make a FY24 to FY25 comparison for certain accounts.
Many of the general themes of this budget proposal are the same as with previous budgets from the Biden Administration. Regular readers of the Policy Blog will recall the R&D priorities memo that OSTP released over the summer. The Administration continues to focus on advancing trustworthy artificial intelligence; climate change; scientific innovation in critical and emerging technologies; and diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts. According to the Administration, their request will invest, “$20 billion across major research agencies, an increase of $1.2 billion above the 2023 level, to boost American innovation and re-establish American leadership in research and scientific discovery.”
At a very high level, the President’s FY25 proposal calls for $900 billion for defense-related programs, which is $16 billion more than current levels (or a 1.8 percent increase), and $1029 billion (or $1.02 trillion) for domestic spending, which is $28 billion more than FY24 (or a 2.8 percent increase). These numbers are taken from Table S-4 on page 141 of the Administration’s request. Keep in mind that roughly 60 percent of the FY24 budget (ie: last year’s budget) has not been approved by Congress yet, so a real year-to-year comparison is not possible yet.
Knowing the different defense versus non-defense spending pots is important because of the May budget agreement that President Biden and then House Speaker McCarthy agreed to, and passed into law. It sets specific funding targets for these types of spending. According to the deal, both spending categories are only supposed to increase by 1 percent each for FY25. At this time, it’s unclear if President Biden has kept to the agreement or not. However, at least for the Defense Department, they are asserting that this request does conform to the law and is a near zero-growth budget.
Let’s get into the details:
National Science Foundation: Topline $10.2 billion, an increase of $1.14 billion, or 12.6 percent, over FY24 levels. While that is a good number, and an increase over the steep cut that Congress just approved for NSF, it is also roughly a billion dollars less than what the Administration requested for the agency a year ago. This is very much a reflection of the difficult budget environment we are in and how constrained the Administration is with the previously mentioned May budget agreement.
The President’s plans call for NSF to play a key role in, “strengthening U.S. leadership in artificial intelligence (AI) and other critical emerging technologies; boosting research and development, including for combating the climate crisis; supporting the Nation’s research infrastructure; advancing equity while promoting education and workforce development in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM); and increasing research security and oversight.”
Numbers for Research and Related Activities (RRA) and the STEM Education Directorate (EDU) were not included in the initial release. Likewise, the topline number for the CISE Directorate was not provided. However, many topics that fall under CISE’s mission do get mentioned. As an example, artificial intelligence continues to be an issue of major importance to the Biden Administration, with multiple references to agencies and departments cited for implementing the October Executive Order on AI.
A topline number was released for the Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships (TIP) Directorate. TIP would receive $900 million under the President’s plan. It’s not yet possible to tell if that is an increase or not for TIP, over last year’s levels. We will have to wait for NSF to release their spending plans for FY24 before we know. It would constitute an increase of $20 million over the Directorate’s FY23 budget. The Administration cites a larger increase in their document, which is due to the difference of baseline vs total from how FY23 was approved by Congress (CRA, where possible, is comparing total funding, FY24 versus FY25).
Department of Energy, Office of Science: Topline $8.6 billion, an increase of $360 million or 4.4 percent over FY24 levels. Details for the Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) program, home to most of SCs computing research programs, and the Advanced Research Project Agency -Energy (ARPA-E) were not included. And similar to NSF’s request, this year’s proposed topline budget is about $200 million less than the Administration requested for DOE SC last year.
The budget document identifies several areas that the department plans to focus its investments: “cutting-edge research at the national laboratories and universities as well as building and operating world-class scientific user facilities; identifying and accelerating novel technologies for clean energy solutions; improving predictability of climate trends and extremes using high performance computing; providing new computing insight through quantum information; and positioning the United States to meet the demand for isotopes.”
NASA: Topline $25.4 billion, an increase of $500 million or 2.0 percent over FY24 levels. The justification for the space agency’s FY25 budget is for, “exploring the Moon with U.S. and international partner astronauts; understanding the Earth system; conducting a broad space science program consisting of multiple exciting missions; and transitioning from a Government-led to commercially-led space stations.” Details for the NASA Science budget were not included.
Agencies toplines not Included in initial release:
National Institute of Standards & Technology (NIST)
National Institutes of Health (NIH)
Department of Defense (DOD)
What happens now? More details for several agencies have been released, with others expected this week. After that, the budget process heads to both chambers of Congress for deliberations. While these initial numbers look relatively good, it’s important to keep our expectations in check. The majority of FY23 still needs to be settled by Congress, who have a Friday March 22nd deadline.
Additionally, this FY25 is expected to be very long and rocky; possibly even more so than FY23 (if that’s possible). The Republican led House of Representatives has not changed; in fact, their majority has shrunk, which will make passing any legislation even harder. With this being a Presidential election year, the assumption here in Washington is that FY25 will be punted until after that election. It is even likely final consideration of the budget will be pushed into the 2025 calendar year. Again, we should expect a very long budget process.
CRA will continue tracking developments at every stage of the process. We will also have our normal detailed dives into specific agency’s requests, so be sure to check back for more information.
Last week, Congress passed, and President Biden signed into law, the Fiscal Year 2024 budgets for the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Standards & Technology, the Department of Energy’s Office of Science, and NASA. Many of these budgets received funding cuts, some significant, compared to FY23 levels. CRA released the following statement expressing serious concerns about these funding levels:
CRA Statement Expressing Serious Concerns About Fiscal Year 2024 Funding Levels at the National Science Foundation and Other Key Federal Research Agencies
The Computing Research Association (CRA), representing more than 250 computing research organizations in academia and industry, has serious concerns about the significant cuts to Fiscal Year 2024 (FY24) funding levels that have been approved for key Federal research agencies, particularly the National Science Foundation (NSF). These cuts will have a significant impact on American leadership in key technologies. As the National Science Board’s recently released Science & Engineering Indicators note, the United States has lost significant ground in critical fields related to computing research, such as in artificial intelligence, where the People’s Republic of China has surpassed the US in research publications and patents and is educating more doctoral students in S&E fields.
This situation is only exacerbated by the FY24 appropriations process, where Congress approved an 8.5 percent cut to NSF, a reduction of $840 million in funding compared to FY23. Also cut were the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) – reduced 10.4 percent or $170 million vs. FY23 – and the Department of Energy’s Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) program (4.7 percent cut, or $50 million). All three agencies are critical to maintaining U.S. leadership in cutting edge computing research, especially in areas of significant national interest like artificial intelligence, quantum computing, high-performance computing, and cyber security. Innovations in these areas are crucial to our national security and economic future.
These cuts will reduce the quantity of research, the number of researchers, and the number of students educated in key fundamental areas of computing and other fields of discovery at a time when global challenges demand that we increase all these measures. These cuts are occurring at the same time that the People’s Republic of China is increasing its investment in fundamental research.
We stand with the National Science Board in sounding the alarm as the country’s lead in several S&E metrics continues to degrade. For the United States to maintain its leadership in these and other S&E fields, we must follow through on the bipartisan promise of the CHIPS and Science Act, which recognized the need for broad investments in fundamental research to fuel innovation and discovery, and find supplemental support for these agencies. Failing to do so risks ceding valuable ground to our adversaries in these critical technologies, as well as the innovations that will lead to technologies not yet imagined.
Over the weekend, Congressional appropriators released the initial batch of Fiscal Year 2024 funding legislation. This covers the parts of the Federal Government that are under a continuing resolution until this Friday, March 8th. While it is good that the end for a significant portion of the FY24 budget is in sight, the specifics are not good for the country’s researchers. As it turns out, many federal science agencies will receive cuts to their budget; with some, particularly the National Science Foundation, being significant.
In terms of covered research agencies, this current set of funding bills includes the budgets for NSF, NIST, NASA, and DOE. We will need to wait for the second group of funding bills to find out about the budgets for the Department of Defense research accounts and NIH. Those agencies are under a continuing resolution until March 22nd.
Let’s get into the details:
National Science Foundation
FY23 Final
FY24 House
FY24 Senate
FY24 Final
$ Change
% Change
NSF Total
$9.90B
$9.63B
$9.50B
$9.06B
-$840M
-8.5%
R&RA
$7.80B
$7.87B
$7.60B
$7.18B
-$620M
-7.9%
EDU
$1.37B
$1.01B
$1.23B
$1.17B
-$200M
-14.6%
There is no sugarcoating this news, this is a bad budget for NSF. But it does require some backstory to understand what is happening. Regular readers will recall that NSF received a historic increase for their Fiscal Year 2023 budget. However it was done in an unusual way. The funding was placed in the supplemental funding section of the FY23 Omnibus, not in the section that contains NSF’s baseline budget. That means, from a certain point of view, NSF’s baseline budget did not increase last year. However, the appropriators put language in the omnibus resetting NSF’s baseline to the higher number.
Fast forward to this week and the appropriators are setting NSF’s baseline back to the FY22 levels (which are: Total, $8.84B; RRA, $7.20B; and EDU, $1.01B). By that comparison, the agency’s topline and EDU budgets are getting slight increases, while RRA is mostly flat. However, keep in mind NSF is doing all the new operations within the TIP Directorate, which received the majority of NSF’s FY23 increase, so this is a real cut to NSF’s budget and its operations.
In terms of policy details, the appropriators say a lot of good things about NSF in the explanatory statements section of the FY24 budget documents. The appropriators support NSF’s work in artificial intelligence, quantum information sciences, and notes the first awards with the NSF Engines program in the TIP Directorate. The statements also support NSF’s efforts with the NAIRR program. There are also no restrictions on any broadening participation efforts at the agency, which were included in the House written (though never advanced) funding legislation.
However, all this praise is for not with such a large cut to the agency’s budget. The point about the NSF Engines program is particularly noteworthy, as it’s unclear how NSF can run that program as envisioned and fund their core research programs at the levels specified by Congress. Something will have to give.
It’s hard to tell where this budget is coming from. The science policy community in Washington has been hearing all year from appropriators that, though “tough choices would have to be made,” NSF would be looked after. This appears more like NSF was overlooked in favor of other priorities. CRA is working with our friends and allies in the policy community to assess the situation, figure out what went wrong, and decide on next steps for the community.
National Institute of Standards & Technology
FY23 Final
FY24 House
FY24 Senate
FY24 Final
$ Change
% Change
NIST Total
$1.63B
$1.47B
$1.45B
$1.46B
-$170M
-10.4%
STRS
$953M
$1.02B
$1.02BM
$1.08B
+$127M
+13.3%
The situation with NIST’s budget is quite unusual and confusing. CRA is performing a topline budget comparison above, but that muddies the waters in understanding the full extent of what is happening at the agency. Congress has used NIST as a vehicle for lots of Congressional directed funding (meaning earmarks) for the last several years. That makes a year-to-year comparison of their budget very difficult. AIP’s FYI Budget Tracker has done the hard work of keeping track of the specifics.
When looking at the above chart, a data point to keep in mind: there were $300 million worth of earmarks in NIST’s FY24 topline budget, with $220 million in NIST STRS alone. Looking only at NIST’s base budget, according to AIP FYI, it will drop 8 percent to $1.16 billion. And the NIST construction account will be cut by a third. This isn’t great news for the agency, as it has a major maintenance backlog with its facilities.
In terms of policy direction, there are a bunch of good things said about the agency covering topics like AI, cybersecurity, quantum, and other matters. The appropriators even provide $10M for the new AI Safety Institute. But that is fairly cold comfort in light of such sobering budgets.
NASA
FY23 Final
FY24 House
FY24 Senate
FY24 Final
$ Change
% Change
NASA Total
$25.4B
$25.4B
$25.0B
$24.9B
-$500M
-2.0%
Science
$7.80B
$7.38B
$7.34B
$7.33B
-$470M
-6.0%
NASA Science was the hardest hit part of NASA’s budget. Reading through the explanatory statements, it appears that the Congressional appropriators have serious questions about how NASA is handling several major projects, particularly the Mars Sample Return mission (several paragraphs in the explanatory statement are devoted to the MSR alone). There is also this line in the explanatory statements: “The agreement notes that there has not been consultation with some Members of Congress about NASA’s decision to move forward with workforce reductions before a fiscal year 2024 bill was enacted and notes concern that NASA’s actions have contributed to serious losses in NASA’s high-skilled workforce.” This is likely in reference to announced layoffs at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in early February, which caught many people off guard.
Department of Energy
FY23 Final
FY24 House
FY24 Senate
FY24 Final
$ Change
% Change
DOE SC Total
$8.10B
$8.10B
$8.43B
$8.24B
+$140M
+1.7%
ASCR
$1.07B
$1.02B
$1.02B
$1.02B
-$50M
-4.7%
ARPA-E
$470M
$470M
$450M
$460M
-$10M
-2.1%
If there is a “winner” in this batch of funding legislation, it would be the DOE research accounts; most of the programs within the Office of Science were flat funded or received slight cuts, with a few getting slight increase. These numbers are a compromise between the House’s flat funding ($8.10B) versus the Senate’s increase ($8.43B). The ASCR program in particular was set to get roughly the same budget in both the House and Senate plans. And ARPA-E receiving a relatively slight cut is to be expected in this budget environment.
In the explanatory statement for the Energy & Water accounts, the appropriators provided Senate levels of funding for DOE’s AI, machine learning, and QIS efforts within the Office of Science. They also provided FY23 level funding for the department’s FAIR and RENEW programs, whose aims are to expand and diversifying the researcher workforce and institutions that DOE works with; the House plan had zeroed out the budgets of these programs. There are no additional policy details or direction for ARPA-E.
Conclusion
The next step in the process is for both chambers to vote on these bills before sending them to the President for signing into law. The House is likely to go first and do so in the next few days. That sequence of events assumes no problems develop in the process, which means it is not an assured outcome, considering how Congress has operated over the last year. We will be watching for any unexpected developments closely.
This is not an ideal outcome to this budgetary year; in fact, FY24 has been a particularly zero-sum environment. Keep in mind, House Republicans had adopted the position, at the beginning of 2023, to cut overall Federal spending to FY22 levels. Given the push to cut overall federal spending by certain factions within Congress, this outcome is not entirely unexpected. And there are still the DOD research accounts and NIH to worry about in the second set of funding legislation. We will likely find out the details with those bills in the next week or so. But, even with those factors taken into account, we can’t escape the fact that these budgets are not good for the country’s researchers, particularly NSF’s community. CRA will have to make that clear in our communications with policymakers. Please check back to the CRA Policy Blog for the latest news.
Congress is once again rushing to avoid a potential lapse in budgetary funding authority, which would lead to a partial shut of the Federal Government this weekend. Readers will recall that in January Congress continued using a “laddered,” or “two-step,” process of having two deadlines for parts of the Federal budget. About 20 percent of the government’s funding authority was set to lapse tomorrow, March 1st, while the other 80 percent was set to lapse a week later on March 8th. With the first deadline approaching, Congress still doesn’t have an agreement finalizing the Fiscal Year 2024 budget. But there is a glimmer of hope.
Congressional leaders have agreed to extend the deadline for the first tranche of budget bills by a week, to March 8th. In addition to the original group of Federal departments (Energy, Veterans, Transportation, HUD, and Agriculture, as well as military construction programs), this will include the budgets for the Justice, Commerce, and Interior Departments, which were in the second group of accounts. The working theory is these are the budgets that are least controversial and most likely to pass through Congress. The other budgets, that are in the original March 8th grouping, would have their budget authority extended by a second continuing resolution until March 22nd.
Should these new continuing resolutions (CRs) be passed, and if it leads to FY24 budgets being finalized, it will be welcome news to researchers. NSF, NIST, and NASA are included in the budget bills that contain the Justice and Commerce Departments. Having those budgets done would finally give budget certainty to those research agencies for FY24. In addition, the Department of Energy has been included in this group since November; that would mean the majority of research agencies’ budgets could be completed in a week.
There are a lot of “ifs” in the calculus, however. The rest of the budget would still need to be completed, and that includes the Department of Defense and its research accounts. As well, this new batch of CRs are that: continuing resolutions, not passed into law budgets. And all the politics and dysfunction in Congress are hanging over the process. So, a glimmer of hope that this budgetary year could be finished before the end of the month, but it is only a glimmer at the moment. Please keep checking back for more updates and the latest news.
On February 15th, the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology held a hearing, titled “Examining Federal Science Agency Actions to Secure the U.S. Science and Technology Enterprise”, to look at how federal science agencies are implementing, “recent guidance and laws to protect proprietary technology and scientific discoveries.” The committee heard from witnesses from the Biden White House and multiple federal research agencies about the status of implementing those policies across the federal government and what challenges there are to preserve the country’s open scientific environment.
The Chairman of the Science Committee, Frank Lucas (R-OK), in his opening statement wasted no time getting to the crux of the hearing: “Research theft is one of the single greatest threats to our competitiveness as a nation.” He went further, pointing out that “our hard-won innovations…(are) put to work for our adversaries” and specifically called out China for their actions to illicitly extract the findings of federally supported research. Chairman Lucas, after providing an overview of the bipartisan actions the committee has taken over the last several years to improve the government’s approach to research security, pointed out that there is still no, “timely, clear, and uniform guidance on this issue for our agencies and for our researchers.” The chairman was also clear to say that the committee is, “not here to target researchers based on their race but based on the actions they have taken, and that their objective is, “to ensure that all federally funded scientists follow the U.S. principles of scientific fairness and integrity.”
The chairman also entered into the record a letter to the Director of the Office of Science & Technology Policy Director (OSTP), Arati Prabhakar, one of witnesses, from the Association of American Universities. In that letter, the President of AAU pointed out the concerns that universities have with no clear guidance from the federal government on implementation of research security programs, and further emphasized that those eventual requirements need to be harmonized across the federal government to not adversely impact research institutions.
In her opening statement, Science Committee Ranking Member Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) did not stray far from Chairman Lucas’ comments, saying, “as the landscape continues to evolve, what’s most important is that we continue to approach this challenge thoughtfully and clear-eyed about the tradeoffs we are willing and not willing to make.” After highlighting several statistics on the contribution foreign born researchers make to the country’s scientific efforts, Representative Lofgren said that we need to, “choose to preserve the global vision of the United States being the best country in the world to be a researcher.” In closing, Lofgren pointed out that, “the rhetoric around research security itself has been enough to send a chill across our colleges, universities, and start-ups.” She specifically noted the impact on the country’s Asian American communities and said, “we must make every effort possible to avoid profiling based on race, ethnicity, or nationality.”
The witnesses for the hearing represented perspectives from the White House and a number of key federal research agencies. The first witness was Presidential Science Advisor and Director of OSTP, Arati Prabhakar, who represented the perspective of the Biden Administration and the lead office in charge of harmonizing research security policies across the Federal Government. In her remarks, Dr. Prabhakar highlighted several steps OSTP has taken with regard to research security, such as releasing a memo on the purpose and use of common forms for researchers and guidelines covering foreign talent recruitment programs (both will be the subject of a future Policy Blog article). Joining Dr. Prabhakar were Dr. Rebecca Keiser, Chief of Research Security Strategy and Policy at the National Science Foundation; Dr. Geri Richmond, Under Secretary for Science and Innovation at the Department of Energy; and Dr. Michael Lauer, Deputy Director for Extramural Research at the National Institutes of Health. Collectively they provide perspectives of how their research agencies are implementing their own research security programs and the response from their communities.
During the question period, it was clear that the committee members wanted to hear how the federal research agencies were guarding against the theft of taxpayer funded research, particularly from the Chinese government. However, the witnesses tried to articulate that there remain considerable challenges to implementing these policies. In response to a question from Chairman Lucas, Dr. Pradhakar said that initial comments that OSTP received from the community gave them “considerable pause” in moving forward, with concerns about the administrative burden on universities and researchers being specifically mentioned, as well as not wanting to turn these requirements into a “checklist.” All the witnesses conveyed that they were impressing on their individual research communities that these requirements are a serious matter and should not be dismissed out of hand. But they also conveyed, to the members of the committee, the trepidation that their communities felt about these policies and programs.
There was a particularly telling anecdote that Dr. Richmond voiced about a researcher who is originally from China but had established his career and life in the United States and planned to remain here. According to Dr. Richmond, he was terrified of being punished for a simple mistake and being sent back to China. In an exchange with Rep. Brandon Williams (R-NY), quoted by Science Magazine in their own coverage of the hearing, Dr. Richmond told the researcher to take these policies seriously and:
“the next time you submit a [grant] proposal, you need to be honest and transparent with your university about your current and pending research support…because we don’t know whether to trust you or not.”
This hearing underlines the fact that research security is a matter of great importance to lawmakers in Washington, and it will continue to be a matter of great importance for the foreseeable future as research agencies continue to rollout their policies. American researchers, should they wish to continue to receive taxpayer funded research grants, need to take this matter seriously too and follow closely any new policies that the research agencies release. At the same time, the community needs to be sure that the government’s concerns about research security don’t turn into government overreach. It was clear at the hearing that both the research agencies, and the leaders of the House Science Committee, are grappling with that concern while attempting to secure the nation’s research enterprise. CRA will continue to monitor this matter, representing the concerns and positions of the community with policymakers, and will report out any new developments.
Please use the Category and Archive Filters below, to find older posts. Or you may also use the search bar.
Roundup of FY2025 Research Agency Requests: Complicated Situations Abound for the Requested Budgets of NIST, NASA, and NIH
/In: Funding, FY25 Appropriations, Research /by Brian MosleyIn our continuing series following the Biden Administration’s Fiscal Year 2025 (FY25) budget request, we close out with a roundup of an assortment of Federal research agencies. These include the National Institute of Standards & Technology (NIST), National Institutes of Health (NIH), and NASA.
As with the previous agencies we have looked at, we are comparing the President’s FY25 request to the final budget numbers in Fiscal Year 2024, approved by Congress in March. The agencies did not have finalized budgets for FY24 when they created their justifications, and instead compared their requested budgets to FY23. Please be aware of this as you read the original budget documents.
First, let’s look at NIST. This agency’s budget has become quite difficult to assess because Congress has used it for a large number of Congressionally directed funding (ie: earmarks) over the last several budget cycles, making a year-to-year comparison hard. We are comparing top line budget numbers here, though we provide some contexts where we can.
The top line for NIST is $1.50 billion, an increase of $40 million over FY24, or 2.7 percent. The institutes’ Science and Technical Research and Services (STRS) account, where the majority of the agency’s research is housed, would see a decrease of 9.7 percent; going from $1.08 billion in FY24 to $975 million in FY25. STRS’s budget line is a good example the difficulties of making year-to-year comparison due to the earmark situation. When excluding earmarks, the program is actually increasing 13.7 percent (FY24 Final at $857 million vs FY25 PBR at $975 million).
In terms of what the agency is planning on doing with its funding, artificial intelligence, quantum information sciences, and laboratory maintenance figure heavily in the Administration’s plans. The agency is planning on increasing funding for AI research by $48 million and QIS by $14 million. With regard to AI, these funds will allow the agency to, “conduct…research; develop and conduct testing, evaluation, verification, and validation (TEVV) methods; develop technical guidance; facilitate development of standards; and implement best practices and frameworks.” With QIS, the extra funding will allow NIST to, “accelerating and expanding R&D efforts that underpin continued innovation and competitiveness for the rapidly growing U.S. quantum industry – including associated domestic supply chains –while meeting novel security threats posed by quantum technologies.”
While CRA has not historically tracked the “Construction of Research Facilities” (CRF) budget line, it is becoming an increasingly important part of NIST. This is due to the significant maintenance backlog that the agency is contending with. The Biden Administration is taking note and CRF received a significant infusion of funds, increasing the budget by 255 percent after earmarks are excluding. Since a maintenance backlog does not disappear in a year, we can expect CRF to continue to get attention from the agency for the next several years, assuming Congress provides funds to cut into the backlog. The research community needs to take note of this because it could have a long-term impact on the research accounts.
The next agency we look at is NASA. Under the President’s plan, the space agency would receive a 2.0 percent increase, going from $24.9 billion in FY24 to $25.4 billion in FY25. While that is an increase against FY24, it is flat funding when compared to Fiscal Year 2023. As for NASA Science, which handles the research funding at the agency, would see a better percentage increase: 3.3 percent, going from $7.33 billion in FY24 to $7.57 billion in FY25. However, that increase would only partially restore the cuts made in the final FY24 budget to the program.
Unfortunately, the details of the NASA Science program are not great. While it does get an increase at the top line, there is quite a bit of movement of money within the subaccounts. Earth Sciences, Astrophysics, and Biological & Physical Sciences are increased, while Planetary Science and Heliophysics are decreased, as compared to FY23 levels. Much of these changes are due to the agency reorganizing or cancelling major missions. For example, the Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission is a major part of Planetary Science’s budget and has been mired in delays and cost overruns, and is being threatened with cancellation by Congress. The Administration is providing funding to the mission to enable, “internal assessment of mission architecture options to be completed to address mission cost overruns.”
Finally, we come to the National Institutes of Health. Under the President’s plan, the agency would go from $48.68 billion in FY24 to $50.12 billion in FY25, an increase of $1.44 billion or 3.0 percent. Meanwhile, ARPA-H, or the Advanced Research Project Agency, Health, would be flat funded at $1.50 billion.
The flat funding of ARPA-H is surprising, given its popularity in Congress and that it has been an Administration priority in the previous fiscal years. Instead, the Administration is focusing on their Cancer Moonshot program and a new “White House Initiative on Women’s Health Research,” which proposes to, “better integrate women’s health within the Federal research portfolio and catalyze significant private and philanthropic commitments to increase funding for women’s health research.” The initiative will also, “double existing funding for the Office of Research on Women’s Health at NIH.”
ARPA-H is continuing to focus its research efforts within “Increasing Accessibility and Expanding Scale,” “Artificial Intelligence, and Health Ecosystem Cybersecurity,” and the afore mentioned Cancer Moonshot program.
As with the other research accounts we’ve profiled, it’s worth tempering any expectations, positive or negative. It is already expected that Congress will not finish FY25 by the time the current fiscal year ends, which is September 30th. In fact, the expectation here in Washington is the budget won’t be voted on until after the November Presidential election at the earliest, and likely not until the 2025 calendar year. And the outcome of that election will heavily influence how FY25 is finalized. Any final numbers for these agencies are guesswork at the moment.
Next steps in the FY25 budget process are for each chamber of Congress to come up with their individual funding plans. That process should begin soon. We’ll have updates as those bills become public; keep checking back for more information.
Department of Defense FY 2025: Request: Another Brutal Budget Request for the Defense Research Accounts
/In: Defense R&D Highlights, Funding, FY25 Appropriations, Research /by Brian MosleyIn our continuing series following the Biden Administration’s Fiscal Year 2025 (FY25) budget request, we turn to the Department of Defense (DOD). In what has become a grim ritual, the Biden Administration has submitted another terrible request for the defense research accounts, as it has for the last three years. This time there is at least some reasoning behind the actions.
As we have pointed out with NSF’s and DOE’s budget request, the Administration is heavily constrained by the requirements of the Fiscal Responsibility Act, agreed to by President Biden and then House Speaker McCarthy in May of 2023. That law splits all federal spending into two pots of money for Fiscal Year 2025, one for Defense and the other for NonDefense. It then limits the increase of each pot to 1 percent for FY25. This has impacts for entire Defense Department budget; in fact, the Defense Secretary has said the entire Defense Department request for this year constitutes a zero-growth budget. As with the just passed FY24 budget, this creates a harsh budgetary environment.
Before we get into the budget numbers, a little refresher about the DOD research accounts: the DOD’s Science and Technology (DOD S&T) program is made up of three accounts: 6.1 (basic research), 6.2 (applied research), and 6.3 (advanced technology development). These accounts are themselves made up of individual accounts for each of the three services (Army, Navy, and Air Force), as well as a Defense Wide account. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is a section under the Defense Wide account.
All three of DOD S&T’s accounts do badly under the President’s budget plan. Basic Research (6.1), which is the main Defense Department supporter of fundamental research at US universities, gets the smallest cut of 6.8 percent; going from $2.63 billion in FY24 to $2.45 billon under the Administration’s plan (a cut of $180 million). The details within the 6.1 accounts do not improve the situation: the Army, Navy, and Air Force’s “University Research Initiative” subaccounts are cut at 8.8, 11.4, and 22.7 percent compared to their FY24 levels, respectively.
The Applied Research (6.2) account is hit even harder, receiving a 23.6 percent cut; going from $7.59 billion in FY24 to $5.80 billion under the Administration’s FY25 framework, a loss of $1.80 billion. Finally, Advanced Technology Development (6.3) would also receive a significant cut, going from $11.29 billion in FY24 to $9.00 billion in FY25, a cut of $2.29 billion, or 20.3 percent.
DARPA is the only bright spot among the defense accounts, escaping any proposed cuts. The agency would see a good increase of 6.1 percent, going from $4.12 billion in FY24 to $4.37 billion in FY25, an increase of $250 million.
What’s going on here? There are two ways of looking at these budgets. Unfortunately, neither view is good news by itself and they are quite terrible when viewed together. The first way to look at them is the way the Pentagon leadership plans their budgets, which is from budget request to budget request. Put simply, no country can plan a workable national defense strategy around the vagueness of a legislative budget cycle. When we look at the FY24 budget request and compare it to the FY25 budget request, as the Pentagon’s planners do, it shows that even this year’s request is a reduction:
6.1 – reduced by 1.1 percent
6.2 – reduced by 3.7 percent
6.3 – reduced by 4.0 percent
DARPA – reduced by 0.4 percent.
This shows that the defense research accounts don’t appear to be a priority for the Defense Department leadership.
The other way to look at them is one we talk about almost every year: budget gamesmanship. Namely that money is pulled by DOD leaders from what is seen as a Congressional priority (i.e. research funding) to put toward something else that does not have the same support. If the scheme works, Congress puts money back into R&D and the moved money “sticks” elsewhere in the DOD budget. It’s not a new strategy, as the last couple of presidential administrations have done it.
The obvious problem with this plan is, what if Congress doesn’t put the money back? You get what happened in the final FY24 budget, namely hard budgetary cuts. It only goes to show that to start at a bad budget request is a good way to end with a bad budget for the year.
As CRA has done for the past several years, we will continue to make the case, in concert with our friends and allies in the other scientific fields and higher education institutions, for the importance of these Federal investments in defense research for our national security.
With the difficult political year ahead, and the zero-sum budget environment we are in, this will be a long process. As with the other research agencies we’ve highlighted, the partisan fight over the budget is shaping up to be particularly bad this year, especially with the Presidential election in November. We’ll have to let the budget process play out more before we know what will happen; please check back for more updates.
Department of Energy FY 2025 Request: Office of Science Would Receive a Good Budget Under the President’s Plan; ASCR Fares Well
/In: Funding, FY25 Appropriations, Research /by Brian MosleyIn our continuing series analyzing the President’s Fiscal Year 2025 budget request to Congress, we turn to the Department of Energy. Specifically, we are looking at the two key parts of DOE that are of concern to the computing community: the Office of Science (SC), home to most of the agency’s basic research support, and ARPA-E, or the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy.
Readers should note that when the Department of Energy prepared their budget request for this year, they did not have a completed FY24 budget to compare their request against. That means their budget documents will compare this year’s request against the FY23 budget, which was the last approved budget they had. Since Congress has now completed Fiscal Year 2024, CRA is able to do a FY24 Final to FY25 Request comparison.
The President’s FY25 request for DOE SC is $8.60 billion, which is an increase of $360 million, or 4.4 percent, compared to the approved FY24 level of $8.24 billion. The requested budget goes to, “implement the Administration’s objectives to advance bold, transformational leaps in U.S. Science and Technology (S&T), build a diverse and inclusive workforce of the future, and ensure America remains the global S&T leader for generations to come.” Additionally, the request, “increases investments in…basic research on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML), climate change and clean energy, including additional funding for the SC Energy Earthshots, and efforts to support underserved communities through the Reaching a New Energy Sciences Workforce (RENEW) and Funding for Accelerated, Inclusive Research (FAIR) initiatives.”
Within the Office of Science account, the Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) program – home to most of SCs computing research efforts – would fare well. The program would be funded at $1.15 billion, which is an increase of $130 million, or 12.7 percent, over FY24 levels. Unlike the last several years of budget requests for ASCR, the Exascale Computing Project line-item has completed its work and is no longer a line item within the program’s budget. The $77 million that was in the Exascale line item is now transferred over to the ASCR research budget line, along with an additional $69 million. There is also the High Performance Data Facility construction line item, which receives $16 million for the year. All three of those account for the all of the budgetary line items within ASCR’s budget. In terms of research areas, ASCR’s request focuses heavily on AI, exascale computing, and quantum as topics of importance to the program.
As for ARPA-E, the agency would see a slight cut for FY25. Under the President’s plan ARPA-E would receive $450 million, a decrease of $10 million over last year, or 2.2 percent. The request has, “an emphasis on maintaining a healthy portfolio of projects,” which include, “a growing focus on additional scale-up of the most promising projects that have demonstrated success in technical development, project management, and definition of commercial pathways.”
ARPA-E’s poor budget request is likely an outcome of two things. First, ARPA-E escaped the last budgetary year with a relatively small cut; DOE may have expected a worse budget for FY24 and expected a FY25 to be an improvement.
But it’s more likely because of the budgetary constraints that the Administration is working under from the May 2023 budget agreement with Congress, known as the Fiscal Responsibility Act. As a reminder, that law splits all federal spending into two pots, Defense and NonDefense, and limits the increase of those pots of spending to 1 percent for FY25. As with the just passed FY24 budget, this creates a harsh, zero-sum budgetary environment. The Administration is likely prioritizing the fundamental sciences in the Office of Science accounts and that comes with a relatively flat funding for the applied research at APRA-E. In short, tough budget decisions.
What are the next steps for the budget? Technically the process goes to Congress in order for both chambers to work out their own funding plans. However, it is important to keep our expectations in check for this year. It is already expected that Congress will not finish FY25 on time (by October 1st). In fact, the expectation here in Washington is the budget won’t be voted on until after the November Presidential election at the earliest, and likely not until the 2025 calendar year. And the outcome of that election will heavily influence how FY25 is finalized. But even without the timeline issues, the constraints on the budget by the aforementioned Fiscal Responsibility Act will create significant problems for the science policy community and the nation’s researchers this year.
There is still a lot of time between now and the end of the fiscal year; we will have to let events play out before we know for certain what will happen. Please keep checking the CRA Policy Boog for more updates.
FY24 Budget Update: Second Part of Federal Budget Passed into Law; Defense Basic Research Hit with Significant Cut
/In: Defense R&D Highlights, Funding, FY24 Appropriations, Information Technology R&D Highlights, Research /by Brian MosleyAt the end of last week, Congress passed into law the remaining appropriation bills for the second half of the Fiscal Year 2024 federal budget. As regular readers will recall, earlier this month Congress passed the initial batch of funding legislation, which contained the budgets for the National Science Foundation (NSF), Department of Energy Office of Science, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and NASA. Those agencies received flat funding or significant cuts to their budgets. And, unfortunately, that trend continues with this second batch of funding legislation.
In terms of covered research agencies, this current set of bills includes the budgets for the Department of Defense (DOD) research accounts and the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Let’s get into the details:
Department of Defense S&T
As with NSF’s final FY24 budget, there is no sugarcoating the news with the Defense research accounts: these are bad budgets. However, from a paradoxical viewpoint, they are generally better than what the Administration requested in March of last year. Before going into that, let’s get into the specific budget numbers.
All three of DOD S&T’s accounts do badly relative to their previous year’s budgets. Basic Research (6.1), which is the main Defense Department supporter of fundamental research at US universities, received a big cut of 10 percent; going from $2.92 billion in the FY23 to $2.63 billon in FY24, a cut of $290 million. The details within the 6.1 accounts paint a pretty grime picture: the Army, Navy, and Air Force’s “University Research Initiative” subaccounts are cut at 20, 27, and 10 percent, respectively.
The Applied Research (6.2) account is hit with a cut too, though not as significant. The 6.2 account received a 2.6 percent cut, going from $7.80 billion in FY23 to $7.60 billion in FY24, a loss of $200 million. Finally, Advanced Technology Development (6.3) would also receive a cut, going from $11.71 billion in FY23 to $11.29 billion in FY24, a cut of $420 million, or 3.6 percent.
DARPA is the only bright spot among the defense accounts, escaping any proposed cuts but getting flat funded. The agency would see a 1.5 percent, going from $4.06 billion in FY23 to $4.12 billion in FY24, an increase of $60 million.
Here is the paradoxical part: when compared against the President’s requested budgets (PBR), these accounts received increases (except DARPA which would receive a cut relative to the PBR). Here are the percent differences when comparing FY24 Final vs FY24 PBR:
DOD 6.1: +26 percent
DOD 6.2: +21 percent
DOD 6.3: +21 percent
DARPA: -6.1 percent
In many ways this is a reflection of two things. First, the President’s requested budget for the DOD research accounts was quite bad. And second, Congress upped the accounts from those requested budgets. So, from Congress’ perspective, they did these accounts a favor. This only demonstrates the importance of the Administration submitting a good request to start the process; otherwise, it’s easy to be in a budgetary hole that one never gets out of.
National Institutes of Health
Finally, we come to the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The agency would be a relative winner in FY24, escaping cuts but effectively flat funded. At the topline budget, the agency would go from $47.50 billion in FY23 to $48.68 billion in FY24, an increase of $1.18 billion or 2.5 percent. Additionally, ARPA-H (or Advanced Research Project Agency, Health) would be flat funded, receiving the same amount in FY24 that it received in FY23: $1.50 billion.
Conclusion
These budgets have already passed Congress and been signed into law by President Biden. For better or worse, Fiscal Year 2024 is finally complete.
As with the previous set of FY24 research budgets, this is not an ideal outcome to this budgetary year. In fact, FY24 has been a particularly zero-sum environment and that is reflected in the research accounts. Given the push to cut overall federal spending by certain factions within Congress, this outcome is not entirely unexpected. Keep in mind, House Republicans had adopted the position, at the beginning of 2023, to cut overall Federal spending to FY22 levels. A grim final budget for this year is not unexpected, but this is much worse than what either the House or Senate Appropriations Committees had been telegraphing during the year.
CRA has publicly voiced its concerns and frustrations with these budgets on behalf of the computing and information technology research community. We have pointed out the likely negative impacts these budgets will have on the country’s research enterprise, with the reduced quantity of research, the number of researchers, and the number of students educated in key fundamental areas of computing and other fields of discovery. It will also have negative impacts in areas of significant national interest like artificial intelligence, quantum computing, high-performance computing, and cyber security. All while our international competitors are doubling down on their investments in R&D. CRA will continue to make the case that the next fiscal year, Fiscal Year 2025, which the process is already underway, can’t follow down the road of cuts as far as research is concerned.
NSF FY2025 Request: NSF Gets Another Good Budget Request but With Some Qualifications and Unknowns
/In: Artificial Intelligence, Funding, FY25 Appropriations, Information Technology R&D Highlights, Research /by Brian MosleyThe Biden Administration released their Fiscal Year 2025 requested budget on March 11th. As we have done in years past, the CRA Policy Blog will write a series of posts analyzing the assorted agency requested budgets that are important to the computing research community. First up is the agency that supports 78 percent of all Federally-supported basic research in computer science at academic institutions: the National Science Foundation. The Biden Administration proposes another strong budget for NSF. However, this year is a bit different. With a particularly bitter funding cut in Fiscal Year 2024, combined with the Fiscal Responsibility Act requirements on the overall Federal budget, the Administration is heavily constrained in their request. A perfect example of that is the fact that this year’s request for the agency is over a billion dollars less than what was submitted to Congress in NSF’s FY24 request.
A general note: NSF’s budget request was prepared before Congress finished its work on the agency’s FY24 budget. With that in mind, in the agency’s budget documents, you will see they compared the President’s request to FY23 (ie: the last year they had approved funding). Since CRA now has some, but not all, of the numbers for FY24, we will compare the President’s request against that. There are exceptions, most notably the assorted RRA directorates. Congress does not typically fund at that level, leaving it to NSF to decide how funding is exactly distributed. Since the agency has only had a finalized budget for a few weeks, we can only do a FY23 to FY25 request comparison for those parts of the agency.
Under the Administration’s FY25 plan, NSF would see a 12.1 percent increase compared to their FY24 budget approved by Congress earlier this month. NSF would go from $9.06 billion in FY24 to $10.2 billion in FY25, an increase of $1.14 billion. Research and Related Activities (R&RA), the subaccount that contains the funding for research grants, would see a sizable part of that increase, going from $7.18 billion in FY24 to $8.05 billion in FY25, a plus up of $870 million (or 12.1 percent). The STEM Education Directorate (EDU), which contains the agency’s education programs, would also see a sizable increase of $130 million, going from $1.17 billion in FY24 to $1.30 billion under the President’s FY25 plan; that’s an increase of 11.1 percent.
The requested budget would allow NSF to fund an estimated 36,200 research grants in FY25 (37,000 were funded in FY23), allowing for a 27 percent funding rate. The agency estimates that its activities will support a total of 357,100 people in FY25; that number includes senior researchers, other professionals, postdos, graduate students, and undergrads.
CISE Directorate:
The Computer and Information Science and Engineering Directorate (CISE), located within R&RA, and the home for most of the computing research support at NSF, will receive a significant increase. It would go from an estimate of $1.04 billion in FY23 to $1.07 billion for FY25, an increase of $30 million or 2.9 percent. We do not yet have a budgetary number for CISE for FY24.
The CISE Directorate continues to, “play a leadership role,” in many NSF-wide initiatives, such as, “seminal investments in AI, advanced computing systems and services, quantum information science (QIS), advanced communications technologies, advanced manufacturing, semiconductors and microelectronics, biotechnology, and cybersecurity.”
As should surprise no one, artificial intelligence holds a prominent spot in the directorate’s request. CISE will continue to support the pilot NAIRR program with an initial budget of $30 million. The program is to, “amplify efforts across the federal government to cultivate AI innovation and advance trustworthy AI.” Additionally, the directorate will, “continued support for the National AI Research Institutes.” Tasked with establishing two additional AI institutes in the Biden Administration’s October executive order on AI, the directorate will also, “significantly broaden participation in AI research, education, and workforce development through capacity development projects such as ExpandAI, through CISE core investments, and through partnerships within the National AI Research Institutes ecosystem.”
In terms of the broadening participation and workforce development space, CISE, “in alignment with an agency-wide emphasis on Creating Opportunities Everywhere…will continue to invest in a broad suite of activities to support broadening participation in research and education.” For example, “the Broadening Participation in Computing Alliances (BPC-A) will serve as broad coalitions of institutions of higher education, K-12 schools, government, industry, professional societies, and other not-for-profit organizations that design and carry out comprehensive programs addressing underrepresentation in the computing and information science disciplines.” Additionally, the directorate will broaden participation in computing by, “increasing engagement in…research projects from MSIs through the CISE-MSI program and will emphasize education and training of more U.S. based students from diverse backgrounds through CISE Graduate Fellowships (CSGrad4US).” CSGrad4US is a CRA managed program that aims to increase the number of diverse, domestic graduate students pursuing research and innovation careers in the CISE fields: computer science, computer engineering, or information science.
Other major investments in the CISE request are Advance Wireless Research and Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace (SaTC). With regard to the wireless research, the directorate will, “continue to invest in research in advanced wireless networks, building on its track record of enabling early-stage successes in 5G through ground- breaking millimeter-wave research,” and, “will accelerate research in areas with potential significant impact on emerging Next-Generation (NextG) wireless and mobile communications, networking, sensing, and computing systems, with a focus on greatly improving the resiliency and intelligence of such networked systems” With regard to SaTC, CISE will invest in, “current and emerging areas of importance for security and privacy,” including, “the application of AI to security, security and resilience of AI systems, security implications of quantum computation and communication, information integrity, and critical infrastructure security.” The directorate will also, “fund programs that strengthen the national cybersecurity workforce pipeline through education, K-12 programs, and funding to universities and colleges.”
TIP Directorate:
The Directorate for Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships, or TIP Directorate, enjoys continued priority in the President’s budget plans with a requested budget of $900 million for FY25, a 36 percent increase over its budget estimate for Fiscal Year 2023. We do not yet have a budgetary number for TIP for FY24.
TIP continues to receive special attention in the President’s budget roll out, as it figures heavily in the Administration’s priorities. In the president’s fuller budget plans, TIP is called out to as key to, “increase(ing) investments to translate the results of basic research into practical applications and processes that can benefit the Nation.” Within NSF’s justification document, TIP, “aims to usher in a new era for American innovation, accelerating research to impact and enhancing job and economic growth and national security for decades to come.” With that in mind, the directorate aligns its programs with three pillars: “nurtures new and diverse innovation ecosystems throughout” the nation; advance, “technology development across the range of key technology focus areas specified in the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022;” and create, “opportunities for everyone to engage in the nation’s R&D enterprise.”
With regard to the first pillar, nurturing new and diverse innovation ecosystems, the NSF Regional Innovation Engines (NSF Engines) features heavily. Tasked with, “catalyzing place-based innovation to spur economic and job growth,” particularly in places in the country that have, “not benefited from the technology and innovation booms of the last several decades.” The Engines program awarded the initial 10 awards spanning 18 states in January. Additionally, of the initial awards, “two are based in EPSCoR jurisdictions and nine include partners in an EPSCoR jurisdiction; nine include minority-serving institutions and all ten include community colleges; and four are led by industry and nonprofits.”
TIP also, “accelerates the translation of fundamental science and engineering discoveries into innovative new technologies and solutions.” Within this space, the directorate, “optimizes the historic NSF Lab-to-Market Platform, allowing researchers to pursue additional prototyping, demonstration, and scale-up work.” It also introduces, “new translation pathways…facilitating the adoption of NSF-funded research results as secure open-source ecosystems.” The TIP Directorate also, “supports the establishment and operation of testbeds to advance development, integration, deployment, and demonstration of breakthroughs in the key technology focus areas. TIP will also make major investments in artificial intelligence, quantum information sciences, advanced manufacturing, advanced wireless research, clean energy technology, and biotechnology; all these areas will receive significant increases in support, compared to their FY23 budgets.
Finally, the TIP Directorate, “creates opportunities for everyone to engage in the nation’s R&D enterprise.” It does this by working with, “academia, state, local, and tribal governments, industry, and other educational partners to provide practical experiences to diverse learners at every stage of education, from first-time job seekers to experienced workers.”
Conclusions:
For another year, President Biden has shown confidence in NSF and proposed a good budget for the agency. But the optimism of this year’s request should be tempered by the bad budget that precedes it. And it is important to keep expectations in check, as the political situation this year makes it highly unlikely that Congress will finish a budget on time, or even in this calendar year. The going view in Washington right now is that any final FY25 budget will arrive well after the election, with an endgame heavily influenced by the outcome of that election. It’s likely to be another long, difficult year. Please keep checking back for more updates.
President Biden Releases High Level Budget Overview for Fiscal Year 2025; NSF Receives 12% Increase but with an Asterisk
/In: Artificial Intelligence, Funding, FY25 Appropriations, Information Technology R&D Highlights, Policy, Research /by Brian MosleyLast week, the Biden Administration released a high-level overview of their $7.3 trillion budget request for Fiscal Year 2025 (FY25). As has happened the last several years, the documents released contain only a few specific budgetary numbers and details. The document serves more as a summary of the President’s priorities for the assorted Executive branch departments and agencies. More detailed requests from some, but not all, agencies have been released, with more expected this week or next. As CRA has done in years past, as we dig into the details of agencies’ budget request, we will post our analysis to the Policy Blog.
One general note: the Biden Administration makes clear on the first page that this document was prepared before any FY24 funding legislation was passed into law. Therefore, the few comparisons that are made in the document were against previous fiscal years, mostly against FY23. Since we now have some (but not all) of the Fiscal Year 2024 accounts settled, CRA will be able to make a FY24 to FY25 comparison for certain accounts.
Many of the general themes of this budget proposal are the same as with previous budgets from the Biden Administration. Regular readers of the Policy Blog will recall the R&D priorities memo that OSTP released over the summer. The Administration continues to focus on advancing trustworthy artificial intelligence; climate change; scientific innovation in critical and emerging technologies; and diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts. According to the Administration, their request will invest, “$20 billion across major research agencies, an increase of $1.2 billion above the 2023 level, to boost American innovation and re-establish American leadership in research and scientific discovery.”
At a very high level, the President’s FY25 proposal calls for $900 billion for defense-related programs, which is $16 billion more than current levels (or a 1.8 percent increase), and $1029 billion (or $1.02 trillion) for domestic spending, which is $28 billion more than FY24 (or a 2.8 percent increase). These numbers are taken from Table S-4 on page 141 of the Administration’s request. Keep in mind that roughly 60 percent of the FY24 budget (ie: last year’s budget) has not been approved by Congress yet, so a real year-to-year comparison is not possible yet.
Knowing the different defense versus non-defense spending pots is important because of the May budget agreement that President Biden and then House Speaker McCarthy agreed to, and passed into law. It sets specific funding targets for these types of spending. According to the deal, both spending categories are only supposed to increase by 1 percent each for FY25. At this time, it’s unclear if President Biden has kept to the agreement or not. However, at least for the Defense Department, they are asserting that this request does conform to the law and is a near zero-growth budget.
Let’s get into the details:
National Science Foundation: Topline $10.2 billion, an increase of $1.14 billion, or 12.6 percent, over FY24 levels. While that is a good number, and an increase over the steep cut that Congress just approved for NSF, it is also roughly a billion dollars less than what the Administration requested for the agency a year ago. This is very much a reflection of the difficult budget environment we are in and how constrained the Administration is with the previously mentioned May budget agreement.
The President’s plans call for NSF to play a key role in, “strengthening U.S. leadership in artificial intelligence (AI) and other critical emerging technologies; boosting research and development, including for combating the climate crisis; supporting the Nation’s research infrastructure; advancing equity while promoting education and workforce development in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM); and increasing research security and oversight.”
Numbers for Research and Related Activities (RRA) and the STEM Education Directorate (EDU) were not included in the initial release. Likewise, the topline number for the CISE Directorate was not provided. However, many topics that fall under CISE’s mission do get mentioned. As an example, artificial intelligence continues to be an issue of major importance to the Biden Administration, with multiple references to agencies and departments cited for implementing the October Executive Order on AI.
A topline number was released for the Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships (TIP) Directorate. TIP would receive $900 million under the President’s plan. It’s not yet possible to tell if that is an increase or not for TIP, over last year’s levels. We will have to wait for NSF to release their spending plans for FY24 before we know. It would constitute an increase of $20 million over the Directorate’s FY23 budget. The Administration cites a larger increase in their document, which is due to the difference of baseline vs total from how FY23 was approved by Congress (CRA, where possible, is comparing total funding, FY24 versus FY25).
Department of Energy, Office of Science: Topline $8.6 billion, an increase of $360 million or 4.4 percent over FY24 levels. Details for the Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) program, home to most of SCs computing research programs, and the Advanced Research Project Agency -Energy (ARPA-E) were not included. And similar to NSF’s request, this year’s proposed topline budget is about $200 million less than the Administration requested for DOE SC last year.
The budget document identifies several areas that the department plans to focus its investments: “cutting-edge research at the national laboratories and universities as well as building and operating world-class scientific user facilities; identifying and accelerating novel technologies for clean energy solutions; improving predictability of climate trends and extremes using high performance computing; providing new computing insight through quantum information; and positioning the United States to meet the demand for isotopes.”
NASA: Topline $25.4 billion, an increase of $500 million or 2.0 percent over FY24 levels. The justification for the space agency’s FY25 budget is for, “exploring the Moon with U.S. and international partner astronauts; understanding the Earth system; conducting a broad space science program consisting of multiple exciting missions; and transitioning from a Government-led to commercially-led space stations.” Details for the NASA Science budget were not included.
As with the previously mentioned agencies, this request is below what the Biden Administration asked for a year ago. In their FY24 request the President called for a $27.2 billion topline for NASA, almost $2 billion more than they are for FY25.
Agencies toplines not Included in initial release:
What happens now? More details for several agencies have been released, with others expected this week. After that, the budget process heads to both chambers of Congress for deliberations. While these initial numbers look relatively good, it’s important to keep our expectations in check. The majority of FY23 still needs to be settled by Congress, who have a Friday March 22nd deadline.
Additionally, this FY25 is expected to be very long and rocky; possibly even more so than FY23 (if that’s possible). The Republican led House of Representatives has not changed; in fact, their majority has shrunk, which will make passing any legislation even harder. With this being a Presidential election year, the assumption here in Washington is that FY25 will be punted until after that election. It is even likely final consideration of the budget will be pushed into the 2025 calendar year. Again, we should expect a very long budget process.
CRA will continue tracking developments at every stage of the process. We will also have our normal detailed dives into specific agency’s requests, so be sure to check back for more information.
CRA Statement Expressing Serious Concerns About Fiscal Year 2024 Funding Levels at the National Science Foundation and Other Key Federal Research Agencies
/In: Funding, FY24 Appropriations, Impediments to Research Highlights, Information Technology R&D Highlights, Research, Statements /by Brian MosleyLast week, Congress passed, and President Biden signed into law, the Fiscal Year 2024 budgets for the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Standards & Technology, the Department of Energy’s Office of Science, and NASA. Many of these budgets received funding cuts, some significant, compared to FY23 levels. CRA released the following statement expressing serious concerns about these funding levels:
FY24 Budget Update: Initial Batch of Final Budgets Released; NSF to Receive Significant Cut
/In: Funding, FY24 Appropriations, Information Technology R&D Highlights, Policy, Research /by Brian MosleyOver the weekend, Congressional appropriators released the initial batch of Fiscal Year 2024 funding legislation. This covers the parts of the Federal Government that are under a continuing resolution until this Friday, March 8th. While it is good that the end for a significant portion of the FY24 budget is in sight, the specifics are not good for the country’s researchers. As it turns out, many federal science agencies will receive cuts to their budget; with some, particularly the National Science Foundation, being significant.
In terms of covered research agencies, this current set of funding bills includes the budgets for NSF, NIST, NASA, and DOE. We will need to wait for the second group of funding bills to find out about the budgets for the Department of Defense research accounts and NIH. Those agencies are under a continuing resolution until March 22nd.
Let’s get into the details:
National Science Foundation
There is no sugarcoating this news, this is a bad budget for NSF. But it does require some backstory to understand what is happening. Regular readers will recall that NSF received a historic increase for their Fiscal Year 2023 budget. However it was done in an unusual way. The funding was placed in the supplemental funding section of the FY23 Omnibus, not in the section that contains NSF’s baseline budget. That means, from a certain point of view, NSF’s baseline budget did not increase last year. However, the appropriators put language in the omnibus resetting NSF’s baseline to the higher number.
Fast forward to this week and the appropriators are setting NSF’s baseline back to the FY22 levels (which are: Total, $8.84B; RRA, $7.20B; and EDU, $1.01B). By that comparison, the agency’s topline and EDU budgets are getting slight increases, while RRA is mostly flat. However, keep in mind NSF is doing all the new operations within the TIP Directorate, which received the majority of NSF’s FY23 increase, so this is a real cut to NSF’s budget and its operations.
In terms of policy details, the appropriators say a lot of good things about NSF in the explanatory statements section of the FY24 budget documents. The appropriators support NSF’s work in artificial intelligence, quantum information sciences, and notes the first awards with the NSF Engines program in the TIP Directorate. The statements also support NSF’s efforts with the NAIRR program. There are also no restrictions on any broadening participation efforts at the agency, which were included in the House written (though never advanced) funding legislation.
However, all this praise is for not with such a large cut to the agency’s budget. The point about the NSF Engines program is particularly noteworthy, as it’s unclear how NSF can run that program as envisioned and fund their core research programs at the levels specified by Congress. Something will have to give.
It’s hard to tell where this budget is coming from. The science policy community in Washington has been hearing all year from appropriators that, though “tough choices would have to be made,” NSF would be looked after. This appears more like NSF was overlooked in favor of other priorities. CRA is working with our friends and allies in the policy community to assess the situation, figure out what went wrong, and decide on next steps for the community.
National Institute of Standards & Technology
The situation with NIST’s budget is quite unusual and confusing. CRA is performing a topline budget comparison above, but that muddies the waters in understanding the full extent of what is happening at the agency. Congress has used NIST as a vehicle for lots of Congressional directed funding (meaning earmarks) for the last several years. That makes a year-to-year comparison of their budget very difficult. AIP’s FYI Budget Tracker has done the hard work of keeping track of the specifics.
When looking at the above chart, a data point to keep in mind: there were $300 million worth of earmarks in NIST’s FY24 topline budget, with $220 million in NIST STRS alone. Looking only at NIST’s base budget, according to AIP FYI, it will drop 8 percent to $1.16 billion. And the NIST construction account will be cut by a third. This isn’t great news for the agency, as it has a major maintenance backlog with its facilities.
In terms of policy direction, there are a bunch of good things said about the agency covering topics like AI, cybersecurity, quantum, and other matters. The appropriators even provide $10M for the new AI Safety Institute. But that is fairly cold comfort in light of such sobering budgets.
NASA
NASA Science was the hardest hit part of NASA’s budget. Reading through the explanatory statements, it appears that the Congressional appropriators have serious questions about how NASA is handling several major projects, particularly the Mars Sample Return mission (several paragraphs in the explanatory statement are devoted to the MSR alone). There is also this line in the explanatory statements: “The agreement notes that there has not been consultation with some Members of Congress about NASA’s decision to move forward with workforce reductions before a fiscal year 2024 bill was enacted and notes concern that NASA’s actions have contributed to serious losses in NASA’s high-skilled workforce.” This is likely in reference to announced layoffs at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in early February, which caught many people off guard.
Department of Energy
If there is a “winner” in this batch of funding legislation, it would be the DOE research accounts; most of the programs within the Office of Science were flat funded or received slight cuts, with a few getting slight increase. These numbers are a compromise between the House’s flat funding ($8.10B) versus the Senate’s increase ($8.43B). The ASCR program in particular was set to get roughly the same budget in both the House and Senate plans. And ARPA-E receiving a relatively slight cut is to be expected in this budget environment.
In the explanatory statement for the Energy & Water accounts, the appropriators provided Senate levels of funding for DOE’s AI, machine learning, and QIS efforts within the Office of Science. They also provided FY23 level funding for the department’s FAIR and RENEW programs, whose aims are to expand and diversifying the researcher workforce and institutions that DOE works with; the House plan had zeroed out the budgets of these programs. There are no additional policy details or direction for ARPA-E.
Conclusion
The next step in the process is for both chambers to vote on these bills before sending them to the President for signing into law. The House is likely to go first and do so in the next few days. That sequence of events assumes no problems develop in the process, which means it is not an assured outcome, considering how Congress has operated over the last year. We will be watching for any unexpected developments closely.
This is not an ideal outcome to this budgetary year; in fact, FY24 has been a particularly zero-sum environment. Keep in mind, House Republicans had adopted the position, at the beginning of 2023, to cut overall Federal spending to FY22 levels. Given the push to cut overall federal spending by certain factions within Congress, this outcome is not entirely unexpected. And there are still the DOD research accounts and NIH to worry about in the second set of funding legislation. We will likely find out the details with those bills in the next week or so. But, even with those factors taken into account, we can’t escape the fact that these budgets are not good for the country’s researchers, particularly NSF’s community. CRA will have to make that clear in our communications with policymakers. Please check back to the CRA Policy Blog for the latest news.
FY24 Budget Update: Congress Races to Avoid Government Shutdown with New Batch of CRs; Glimmer of Hope Budget Finish Line is Near
/In: Funding, FY24 Appropriations /by Brian MosleyCongress is once again rushing to avoid a potential lapse in budgetary funding authority, which would lead to a partial shut of the Federal Government this weekend. Readers will recall that in January Congress continued using a “laddered,” or “two-step,” process of having two deadlines for parts of the Federal budget. About 20 percent of the government’s funding authority was set to lapse tomorrow, March 1st, while the other 80 percent was set to lapse a week later on March 8th. With the first deadline approaching, Congress still doesn’t have an agreement finalizing the Fiscal Year 2024 budget. But there is a glimmer of hope.
Congressional leaders have agreed to extend the deadline for the first tranche of budget bills by a week, to March 8th. In addition to the original group of Federal departments (Energy, Veterans, Transportation, HUD, and Agriculture, as well as military construction programs), this will include the budgets for the Justice, Commerce, and Interior Departments, which were in the second group of accounts. The working theory is these are the budgets that are least controversial and most likely to pass through Congress. The other budgets, that are in the original March 8th grouping, would have their budget authority extended by a second continuing resolution until March 22nd.
Should these new continuing resolutions (CRs) be passed, and if it leads to FY24 budgets being finalized, it will be welcome news to researchers. NSF, NIST, and NASA are included in the budget bills that contain the Justice and Commerce Departments. Having those budgets done would finally give budget certainty to those research agencies for FY24. In addition, the Department of Energy has been included in this group since November; that would mean the majority of research agencies’ budgets could be completed in a week.
There are a lot of “ifs” in the calculus, however. The rest of the budget would still need to be completed, and that includes the Department of Defense and its research accounts. As well, this new batch of CRs are that: continuing resolutions, not passed into law budgets. And all the politics and dysfunction in Congress are hanging over the process. So, a glimmer of hope that this budgetary year could be finished before the end of the month, but it is only a glimmer at the moment. Please keep checking back for more updates and the latest news.
Research Agencies Tell Congress of the Challenges with Implementing Research Security Policies
/In: People, Policy, Research, Security /by Brian MosleyOn February 15th, the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology held a hearing, titled “Examining Federal Science Agency Actions to Secure the U.S. Science and Technology Enterprise”, to look at how federal science agencies are implementing, “recent guidance and laws to protect proprietary technology and scientific discoveries.” The committee heard from witnesses from the Biden White House and multiple federal research agencies about the status of implementing those policies across the federal government and what challenges there are to preserve the country’s open scientific environment.
The Chairman of the Science Committee, Frank Lucas (R-OK), in his opening statement wasted no time getting to the crux of the hearing: “Research theft is one of the single greatest threats to our competitiveness as a nation.” He went further, pointing out that “our hard-won innovations…(are) put to work for our adversaries” and specifically called out China for their actions to illicitly extract the findings of federally supported research. Chairman Lucas, after providing an overview of the bipartisan actions the committee has taken over the last several years to improve the government’s approach to research security, pointed out that there is still no, “timely, clear, and uniform guidance on this issue for our agencies and for our researchers.” The chairman was also clear to say that the committee is, “not here to target researchers based on their race but based on the actions they have taken, and that their objective is, “to ensure that all federally funded scientists follow the U.S. principles of scientific fairness and integrity.”
The chairman also entered into the record a letter to the Director of the Office of Science & Technology Policy Director (OSTP), Arati Prabhakar, one of witnesses, from the Association of American Universities. In that letter, the President of AAU pointed out the concerns that universities have with no clear guidance from the federal government on implementation of research security programs, and further emphasized that those eventual requirements need to be harmonized across the federal government to not adversely impact research institutions.
In her opening statement, Science Committee Ranking Member Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) did not stray far from Chairman Lucas’ comments, saying, “as the landscape continues to evolve, what’s most important is that we continue to approach this challenge thoughtfully and clear-eyed about the tradeoffs we are willing and not willing to make.” After highlighting several statistics on the contribution foreign born researchers make to the country’s scientific efforts, Representative Lofgren said that we need to, “choose to preserve the global vision of the United States being the best country in the world to be a researcher.” In closing, Lofgren pointed out that, “the rhetoric around research security itself has been enough to send a chill across our colleges, universities, and start-ups.” She specifically noted the impact on the country’s Asian American communities and said, “we must make every effort possible to avoid profiling based on race, ethnicity, or nationality.”
The witnesses for the hearing represented perspectives from the White House and a number of key federal research agencies. The first witness was Presidential Science Advisor and Director of OSTP, Arati Prabhakar, who represented the perspective of the Biden Administration and the lead office in charge of harmonizing research security policies across the Federal Government. In her remarks, Dr. Prabhakar highlighted several steps OSTP has taken with regard to research security, such as releasing a memo on the purpose and use of common forms for researchers and guidelines covering foreign talent recruitment programs (both will be the subject of a future Policy Blog article). Joining Dr. Prabhakar were Dr. Rebecca Keiser, Chief of Research Security Strategy and Policy at the National Science Foundation; Dr. Geri Richmond, Under Secretary for Science and Innovation at the Department of Energy; and Dr. Michael Lauer, Deputy Director for Extramural Research at the National Institutes of Health. Collectively they provide perspectives of how their research agencies are implementing their own research security programs and the response from their communities.
During the question period, it was clear that the committee members wanted to hear how the federal research agencies were guarding against the theft of taxpayer funded research, particularly from the Chinese government. However, the witnesses tried to articulate that there remain considerable challenges to implementing these policies. In response to a question from Chairman Lucas, Dr. Pradhakar said that initial comments that OSTP received from the community gave them “considerable pause” in moving forward, with concerns about the administrative burden on universities and researchers being specifically mentioned, as well as not wanting to turn these requirements into a “checklist.” All the witnesses conveyed that they were impressing on their individual research communities that these requirements are a serious matter and should not be dismissed out of hand. But they also conveyed, to the members of the committee, the trepidation that their communities felt about these policies and programs.
There was a particularly telling anecdote that Dr. Richmond voiced about a researcher who is originally from China but had established his career and life in the United States and planned to remain here. According to Dr. Richmond, he was terrified of being punished for a simple mistake and being sent back to China. In an exchange with Rep. Brandon Williams (R-NY), quoted by Science Magazine in their own coverage of the hearing, Dr. Richmond told the researcher to take these policies seriously and:
This hearing underlines the fact that research security is a matter of great importance to lawmakers in Washington, and it will continue to be a matter of great importance for the foreseeable future as research agencies continue to rollout their policies. American researchers, should they wish to continue to receive taxpayer funded research grants, need to take this matter seriously too and follow closely any new policies that the research agencies release. At the same time, the community needs to be sure that the government’s concerns about research security don’t turn into government overreach. It was clear at the hearing that both the research agencies, and the leaders of the House Science Committee, are grappling with that concern while attempting to secure the nation’s research enterprise. CRA will continue to monitor this matter, representing the concerns and positions of the community with policymakers, and will report out any new developments.