Congress Set to Finalize Science Budgets Rejecting Trump Cuts

The House passed a bundle of three bipartisan spending bills on Thursday that reject the deep cuts for science agencies proposed in the president’s budget request, cutting some agencies and increasing others by single-digit percentages. The Senate plans to vote on the package as soon as next week. If both votes succeed, the appropriations will go to the president for approval. As of publication, the package appears on track to pass.

NASA, the National Science Foundation, and the U.S. Geological Survey would receive cuts compared to fiscal year 2025, while the Department of Energy’s Office of Science and the National Institute of Standards and Technology would receive slight increases. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration would receive roughly flat funding. For detailed numbers, see FYI’s Budget Tracker.

In some cases, appropriators propose using prior year funding in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act to boost the total budget of certain programs beyond their base appropriation.

The package prevents the Commerce Department, NSF, NASA, and DOE from changing reimbursement rates for indirect costs, directing them to use the rates negotiated for fiscal year 2024. DOE and NSF attempted to cap indirect cost rates last year, as did the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Defense, which are not covered in the package. The bill “acknowledges that there is room for improvement” in the current indirect cost rate system, particularly regarding transparency, and states that the alternative Financial Accountability in Research (FAIR) model merits further consideration. Thus far, courts have also rejected the indirect cost caps.

The accompanying explanatory reports also allow NASA and DOE to essentially continue funding the Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer programs despite the lapse of those programs.

DOE Office of Science

DOE’s Office of Science would receive a 1.9% increase to $8.4 billion, with the largest percentage increase to the Advanced Scientific Computing Research program at 7.7%. Congress expects ASCR to take a lead role in DOE’s AI and machine learning activities and encourages it to develop a multi-year successor to the Exascale Computing initiative, the bill report states. The report does not reference DOE’s recent reorganization and funds its offices under the previous structure.

The bill also provides increases for Basic Energy Sciences, Nuclear Physics, and Fusion Energy Science, while cutting High Energy Physics and Biological and Environmental Research by less than 2% apiece and maintaining roughly level funding for isotope R&D and production.

The report encourages DOE to start designing a large-scale Fusion Prototypical Neutron Source facility and an integrated blanket-fuel cycle test facility, in line with recent reports from the Fusion Energy Sciences Advisory Committee. However, construction funding within Fusion Energy Sciences received a 14.7% cut. This reflects a decreased contribution to the multinational fusion research facility ITER at $171 million, though the contribution is still significantly higher than the proposed contributions in the president’s request and the Senate proposal, which were both around $75 million. ITER announced in 2024 that it would not begin full operations until 2039, a four-year delay.

The bill would also appropriate $803 million for inertial confinement fusion, a 14.7% increase from fiscal year 2025 levels, within the National Nuclear Security Administration.

DOE Applied Energy

The bill would use unobligated funds from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act to fund multiple DOE offices, most significantly providing $3.1 billion for advanced reactor deployment and demonstration projects and $1.15 billion for the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.

The bill provides no funding for the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations, and the report directs DOE to provide quarterly briefings on the status of projects previously managed by the office. DOE Under Secretary for Science Darío Gil testified in December that OCED would be integrated into a different office as part of the DOE reorganization.

The bill would cut the Office of Fossil Energy down to $720 million, including $140 million in prior year balances from the IIJA. This would be a 16.8% cut from fiscal year 2025 levels. It includes especially deep cuts to methane mitigation technologies and to natural gas decarbonization and hydrogen technologies.

Language in the report would limit DOE from carrying out grant terminations on the grounds that the funding “no longer effectuates program goals or agency priorities.” DOE cited this reasoning in the cancellations of hundreds of clean energy grants last year.

National Science Foundation

The bill would cut NSF’s budget by 3.4% to $8.75 billion. It would flat-fund the research account and prohibit NSF from cutting any directorate by more than 5% compared to fiscal year 2024.

The bill funds STEM education programs at $938 million, a 20% cut from fiscal year 2024, but far less than the 75% cut proposed by the president’s request. The bill provides specific amounts for several broadening participation programs, which the agency has said it will only continue operating if they are explicitly prioritized in appropriations legislation and established in law. However, the bill does not specify amounts for some broadening participation programs, such as the Eddie Bernice Johnson INCLUDES Initiative.

The bill would increase funding for major construction projects to $251 million, up 7.3% from fiscal year 2024. These funds provide for Antarctic infrastructure upgrades, a research supercomputer facility in Texas, and mid-scale infrastructure projects. The increase aligns with the president’s request and the House proposal, while the Senate proposal would have further increased the budget to $300 million. The White House canceled the major construction funding for fiscal year 2025, saying it was “improperly designated by Congress as emergency.” Top Senate appropriators argued that the move was illegal.

The report directs NSF to advance both the Giant Magellan Telescope and the Thirty Meter Telescope to final design review using private funding. A report from December 2024, commissioned by NSF and written by external experts, said pursuing either telescope could dominate the agency’s limited facilities budget and damage other research areas absent a significant and sustained budget increase from Congress. The congressional directive rejects the president’s request to advance only GMT.

The report also directs NSF to submit a report on its management plan for the R&D centers and major scientific facilities it funds, which include the National Center for Atmospheric Research, an FFRDC in Colorado that the White House said it plans to “break up.” Colorado Rep. Joe Neguse (D) attempted to add language to the bill to continue funding and operating NCAR, but the amendment was voted down by the House Rules Committee. In the Senate, John Hickenlooper (D-CO) and Michael Bennet (D-CO) blocked a funding deal on five appropriations bills last month to “demand full funding for NCAR.”

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

The bill would provide roughly flat funding for NOAA at $6.17 billion. It also moves most weather research programs in the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research to the National Weather Service, as proposed in the president’s budget request. However, unlike the request, the appropriation maintains the remaining OAR programs, including climate and ocean research, at near-level funding to fiscal year 2024. The administration had sought to zero out those programs.

The report directs NOAA to provide a report assessing the idea of a federally funded R&D center for extreme weather, including possible organizational models and how it could complement existing NOAA programs.

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

The bill would cut NASA’s budget 1.6% and its Science Mission Directorate by 1.1%. The breakdown by discipline reveals some reshuffling of funds across the directorate compared to fiscal year 2024, with an 8.7% increase for heliophysics and a 4.3% increase for astrophysics. Planetary science saw a 6.5% cut, while Earth science and biological and physical sciences saw smaller cuts of 1.9% and 2.3%, respectively. The appropriation also maintains level funding for the STEM engagement office, which the president’s budget request proposed eliminating.

The report essentially cancels the Mars Sample Return mission, but nonetheless provides $110 million for the Mars Future Missions program, which includes MSR efforts that will enable other science missions. The committee also rejects the president’s proposed termination of the Space Launch System rocket. It directs NASA to “maintain the fullest possible utilization” of the International Space Station and seeks briefings to ensure at least one commercial provider is able to provide services in low-Earth orbit once the ISS is decommissioned.

The text expresses concern about the impacts of facility and building closures at NASA’s Goddard campus in Greenbelt, Maryland, and directs the agency to “preserve all the technical and scientific world-class capabilities at Goddard” and contract a National Academies study on Goddard’s capabilities and facility needs. Democrats on the House Science Committee said NASA initiated plans in September to shutter half of the Greenbelt campus by March. In response, NASA denied that Goddard is being dismantled but stated that budgetary constraints “forced NASA to implement efforts to ensure the center’s long-term viability through more efficiently utilizing available space and consolidating or reconstituting facilities.”

The appropriations language also charges NASA with ensuring that employees at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies are able to continue work with minimal disruption. NASA closed the New York City office that housed the climate lab in April, and the report directs NASA to consider another physical location nearby. Separately, the report directs NASA to brief the committee on any plans for NASA to move staff d.at its headquarters out of the DC region.

National Institute of Standards and Technology

The bill would increase NIST’s budget by 2.3% to $1.18 billion, excluding the $663 million in earmarks that fund external projects. The research facilities construction budget receives a 45% increase, and the report directs NIST to deliver quarterly updates on efforts to address its “maintenance backlog.” Reports in 2023 and 2024 detailed decaying infrastructure across NIST’s campuses in Maryland and Colorado. NIST research funding would receive a 1.5% cut.

The bill includes no less than $55 million for NIST’s ongoing Al research and measurement science efforts, and the report directs NIST to assess the capabilities of advanced AI models developed by China and other “foreign adversaries,” including by benchmarking these AI models relative to U.S. models.

Office of Science and Technology Policy

The report requests a briefing on whether OSTP is in the process of repealing a Biden-era policy that mandates immediate open access to federally funded research by 2026. It also requests a briefing on OSTP’s plan for implementing Trump’s December executive order on “ensuring American space superiority.”