The first “passbacks” from the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) have apparently begun to leak and rumors are circulating that NIST is once again in for lean times. (Passbacks are OMB’s response to each agency’s budget request for the coming fiscal year — they are OMB’s verdict on what will and won’t get included in the President’s budget request to the Congress in February.)
The Administration apparently supports an increase to NIST Labs, approving a passback budget request of $489 million for FY 06 for intramural research — which would be $38 million more than the FY 05 enacted level — but only about $7 million more than the President’s FY 05 request. More problematically, the current rumor suggests OMB zeroed funding for two controversial (yet somewhat popular) NIST programs: the Advanced Technology Program (ATP), funded for FY 05 at $137 million; and the Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP), funded for FY 05 at $108 million.
Additionally, it sounds as if the administration has decided to eliminate the Commerce Department’s Technology Administration and incorporate it’s functions under NIST. The FY 05 final budget for TA was $7 million.
If the numbers above are accurate, it would suggest that NIST Labs could once again be squeezed come appropriations time, as congressional appropriators scramble to find funding for ATP and MEP (and maybe TA) in the final bill. Though NIST Labs fared reasonably well in the FY 2005 appropriation given the cuts suffered by other agencies (they received a 12.8% increase), they still haven’t fully overcome the significant cuts they suffered as a result of the FY 2004 appropriation. Those cuts resulted in layoffs of some lab personnel and stopped research.
It will take some serious effort by the community to ensure that NIST doesn’t face the same situation once again. We’ll have more details as they emerge.