President’s FY 2006 Budget Cuts IT R&D Funding Overall
Citing a need to continue to foster economic growth and address the deficit, as well as continue to prosecute the War on Terror, President Bush released an austere FY 2006 Budget Request that would sharply limit overall discretionary spending, including a significant reduction in the overall federal investment in information technology research and development. The President’s budget plan, released February 7, 2005, would cut overall spending in FY 2006 for the Networking and Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD) program—the federal crosscut for all agencies involved in funding information technology R&D—by 7 percent compared with FY 2005, decreasing the federal investment to $2.127 billion from $2.282 billion planned for FY 2005.