House Budget Plan Axes DOE, DOC, OTA; Protects “Basic Science”
Today, House Science Committee chairman Robert Walker (R-PA) held a press briefing on the science provisions in the House Budget Committee’s budget resolution. The House Budget Committee, chaired by John Kasich (R-OH), introduced their version of a balanced budget plan yesterday. It claims to make a total of $1.4 trillion in cuts to projected spending for the next seven years in order to bring the federal budget into balance by FY 2002, and to provide $360 billion in tax cuts. The Senate version, which would cut $961 billion over the same period and contains no tax cuts, was released on Tuesday (see FYI #66).
Walker began his briefing by stating that the budget plan “put the emphasis into basic research.” According to Walker and other sources, the major science provisions of the House resolution include:
The General Science, Space and Technology budget function, which includes NSF, NASA, and DOE’s basic research programs, would decline from $16.7 billion in FY 1996 (budget authority) to $14.9 billion in FY 2000.
The NSF budget would continue to grow. Its research and related activities, with the exclusion of social, behavioral and economic studies and the Critical Technologies Institute, are slated for annual increases of three percent. However, just as in the Senate plan, the House resolution considers a baseline of current-year (FY 1995) funding for future years, and any increase beyond that is considered growth, with inflation not taken into account.
DOE would be eliminated, although some of its activities would be continued elsewhere. Programs such as Energy Supply and Conservation would experience significant cuts.
NASA would be reduced from its current budget of over $14 billion to $11.7 billion by FY 2000. Estimated savings from President Clinton’s planned management reforms are included in the resolution, as well as privatization of the shuttle. The Space Station would remain fully funded. Additional cuts of $2.7 billion would come from rescoping the Mission to Planet Earth.
The Department of Commerce would be abolished. While the core intramural laboratory programs of NIST would be preserved, and even increased to $306.6 million by FY 2000, the Advanced Technology Program would be canceled.
The Office of Technology Assessment would also be eliminated.
Asked where programs salvaged from the eliminated departments would be relocated, Walker said that while the plan did not call for a Department of Science, he thought such an entity might be an option. He also noted that the fate of many program would lie with the appropriations and authorization subcommittees, which would decide how and where to make many of the reductions called for in the resolution.
