FY 1995 Budget Request: “Maintain the Investment in Science and

“Investment in science and technology is essential to build a prosperous economy, create high quality jobs, improve health care and education, and maintain national security.” -- Budget of the U.S. Government, FY 1995

At a February 7 White House briefing on the Clinton Administration’s science and technology component of the Fiscal Year 1995 budget request several themes were highlighted. Among them are its future orientation, making government work better, and perhaps most importantly, the administration’s drive (in the words of OMB’s Alice Rivlin) to force the deficit down through “a very, very tough budget.” Despite the hard freeze on over-all federal spending, research and development spending would go up 4% in FY 1995 over this year.

“Our goal in the budget...is to thoughtfully harness science and technology towards the end of economic recovery in the achievement of national objectives in order to improve our competitiveness, our security, and our...quality of life,” said OSTP Director John Gibbons. Gibbons called fundamental research “our most important investment over the longest term,” but also stressed the administration’s objective of increasing federal R&D spending in areas directly related to economic growth. Examples include technology transfer programs at eight agencies, CRADAs, NIST R&D, ARPA dual-use technology, manufacturing technology/extension, national information infrastructure, transportation research, and NASA’s new technology investments. Program increases range between 7% and 60%.

Increases between 1% and 58% were requested for various fundamental science/societal relevance/international cooperation categories, including NSF (up 6%), R&D support to university researchers (up 4%), health research, space station (up 1%), global change (up 24%), and various energy programs.

A component of the administration’s science and technology strategy is seeking opportunities for international cooperation, driven in part by fiscal constraints. Candidates include research programs in global change, high energy physics, fusion, oceanography, and space.

T.J. Glauthier of OMB briefly discussed the SSC cancellation and the impact it has had on other science spending: “It helps us in a sense in being able to fund things with $500 million in the 1995 budget that is [now] available...but there is also a significant hole in some of the science, the high energy physics, and we will have to deal with that in the long term.” Other identified cuts were DOE’s Atomic Vapor Laser Isotope Separation Program (terminated for a savings of $177 million), NASA’s Advanced Solid Rocket Motor Program (savings of $178 million), 13 DOD programs, and some NASA aeronautics research.

Attention now shifts to Capitol Hill. House science committee chairman George Brown commented yesterday, “The good news on deficit reduction heralds tough times ahead for the nation’s R&D investments. The stringency of budget caps has seriously squeezed funding for a number of worthwhile science programs in FY 95, and the long-term outlook for many science and R&D budgets is very grim.”

Future issues of FYI will analyze the budget requests for NSF, the Department of Energy, NASA, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology.