House, White House spending plans are poles apart on energy and other R&D programs

Just as President Obama sent a budget request for fiscal year 2012 to Capitol Hill that includes big increases for energy R&D and other federal basic research programs, House Republicans tacked in the opposite direction, submitting a bill that would chop billions of dollars in spending from R&D programs in the current year.

With the release of his budget proposal on 14 February, Obama renewed his commitments to basic research and clean energy R&D. His proposal includes the following:

• NSF’s budget would increase by 13%, to $7.8 billion.
• Applied energy programs at the Department of Energy would increase by a whopping 43.7%, or $1.1 billion.
• Programs funded by DOE’s Office of Science would see a 9%, or $412 million, rise.
• The fledgling Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy (ARPA–E) would receive $550 million, up 41% from this year.

The Obama blueprint would keep NSF, the DOE Office of Science, and the core research programs at NIST on course to double their budgets over 10 years, a goal that was set by President George W. Bush.

Not all programs would get increased funding. Under the proposal, some specific programs would be terminated or reduced:

• The proposed Deep Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory (DUSEL) would lose all NSF funding because, according to the budget documents, “the construction and operation of such a large, costly, and complex particle physics facility is outside of NSF’s core mission responsibilities.” The project, however, would be kept alive with $15 million from DOE, which is planning to use it for a major neutrino experiment that also involves Fermilab.
• The Los Alamos Neutron Science Center (LANSCE), a linear accelerator, would keep its $80 million operating budget but lose a $20 million major refurbishment.
• After years of cost overruns—which have impacted NASA’s space science program—the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) would receive $354 million, down $84 million, as a new management team looks to get the project back on a stable financial track.

In addition, the Obama administration and Congress have agreed to end all earmarks, a dramatic policy change that will end the longstanding practice where lawmakers shower hundreds of millions of dollars each year on pet projects at universities and other institutions in their districts.

A deep cut

But those cuts appear minor compared to those in the House proposal for FY 2011, the fiscal year that is nearly half gone. One day after Obama’s budget unveiling, the House began debating a bill that would axe nearly $2 billion from DOE’s R&D programs.

The measure, known as a continuing resolution (CR), will be needed to keep the government running after 4 March, when an existing stopgap spending measure expires. Congress failed to approve any of the 12 appropriations bills for FY 2011, and federal agencies have continued operating at 2010 funding levels since last October.

With the GOP-controlled House and Democrats in the Senate and White House diverging so sharply on spending, the specter of a government shutdown looms in early March. Alternatively, another temporary CR could be put in place until a compromise can be reached.

Looking to make good on the “pledge to America” that House Republicans gave during last year’s campaign, the House’s CR (HR 1) would slash federal discretionary programs $61 billion below FY 2010 levels, and $100 million below the level Obama had requested for FY 2011. Compared to 2010, the bill would chop

• $786 million from DOE’s energy efficiency and renewable energy program,
• $893 million from the Office of Science,
• $250 million of ARPA–E’s $389 million budget, and
• $300 million from DOE’s nuclear, fossil fuel, electricity delivery R&D, and clean coal technology programs.

DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration would also lose funding. The CR proposed to cut $312 million from the nuclear weapons program and $97 million from NNSA’s nonproliferation programs.

Steep reductions would be imposed by the House on other R&D-funding agencies, including cuts of $159 million at NIST, $360 million at NSF, and $303 million at NASA. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration would be pared by $484 million.

A cloudy future

Obama’s budget proposes to pay for the increases he wants for clean energy research with revenues generated by eliminating about $4 billion in existing federal tax preferences that subsidize domestic oil, gas, and coal production. But those industries have fought and will continue to fight to keep the preferences.

Obama’s proposal would add $668 million, or 17%, to NNSA’s programs. The president would increase by 14% the Pentagon’s basic research budget (known in Pentagon parlance as 6.1), to $2.1 billion, next year, even as he proposed an overall decline in defense R&D spending of $4 billion, to $76.6 billion. The House CR would cut the science and technology program at the Department of Homeland Security by $86.4 million, and DHS’s Domestic Nuclear Detection Office by $32.5 million. Obama’s request would increase DHS S&T nearly 19%, or $167 million, most of which will go to a new biodefense research facility.

Senate Appropriations Committee chairman Daniel Inouye (D-HI) said that enacting the House CR would result in the loss of at least 150 000 jobs. NSF would award nearly 2000 fewer grants, supporting 27 300 fewer scientists, teachers, and students, if the CR were enacted.

Cuts at DOE’s science office would lead to 5400 job losses, Inouye estimated, while resulting in termination of “dozens of experiments” ranging from advanced biofuels, to advanced batteries and materials for next-generation nuclear reactors. Those cuts, and the ones proposed for ARPA–E, would jeopardize the competitive advantage that the US still holds in the impacted fields, he added.

The reductions in DOE’s nonproliferation program will prevent the US from securing “hundreds of kilograms” of highly enriched uranium now held in insecure facilities in several countries, Inouye said. “In his State of the Union address, the President spoke of the need to ‘Win the Future’,” Inouye said. “We cannot win the future by gutting the very programs that make America competitive in the first place.”

David Kramer