Lawmakers Warn Proposed NOAA Budget Cuts Would Gut Research, Undermine Forecasting

Members of the House Science, Space, and Technology Subcommittee on the Environment clashed with National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Administrator Neil Jacobs during a hearing on Monday on the agency’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2027.

NOAA’s budget request would slash the agency’s funding by $1.6 billion from a total of $6.2 billion last year. NOAA also proposed, as it did in last year’s budget request, to eliminate the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR), which encompasses NOAA’s research labs and institutes. Though NOAA proposes to transfer some OAR activities to other offices within the agency, the proposal still drew criticism from committee members, who said the cuts would leave the U.S. less prepared to face extreme weather events.

The House Commerce, Justice, Science Appropriations Subcommittee published the text of its fiscal year 2027 spending bill today, which recommends funding NOAA at $5.85 billion — a much smaller cut than was proposed by the Trump administration. The committee is scheduled to mark up the bill tomorrow. The committee proposed a similarly sized cut last year, but negotiations with their Senate counterparts eventually produced a final bill that provided essentially level funding for NOAA.

In her opening statement, Science Committee Ranking Member Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) asked whether the Trump administration understood the significance of NOAA, questioning why the administration would again propose to get rid of the OAR, terminate critical research programs, and close cooperative institutes and labs that support better weather forecasting.

“Cutting programs that improve hurricane and tornado forecasting is the very definition of pennywise and pound-foolish,” Lofgren said.

Science Committee Chair Brian Babin (R-TX) also raised concerns about research cuts in his opening statement, questioning the proposal to eliminate research grants focused on streamflow, rainfall prediction, and hydrologic modeling — programs that directly support accurate flash flood warnings. Babin said he was “particularly sensitive” to these efforts following the catastrophic flooding that took place in his state last year.

“I am concerned that eliminating these grants would stymie future improvements,” Babin said. “Let us not forget that NOAA’s primary mission is to protect lives and property. I do not believe this budget request meets the president’s expectations for that core mission.” Babin called on NOAA to work with Congress to “find common ground” and cautioned that the agency’s reorganization plans must not “dilute operational effectiveness” and should preserve critical research capabilities.

In his testimony, Jacobs argued that the administration’s plans would shift resources rather than eliminating them, moving applied and operational research from OAR to the National Weather Service. “There’s really not any areas necessarily that would be abandoned,” Jacobs said, adding, “some would be accelerated.” He acknowledged, however, that extramural grants supporting research at universities would largely be cut. NOAA’s budget proposal says that eliminating OAR will “streamline program management, align research closer to operations, and focus on NOAA’s public safety mission.” The proposal suggests moving “several activities” of OAR to the National Weather Service and the National Ocean Service, but would eliminate all funding for climate, weather, and ocean laboratories and cooperative institutes, as well as funding for “low priority programs” including Regional Climate Data and Information and others.

The proposed elimination of the Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS) — described by Environment Subcommittee Ranking Member Gabe Amo (D-RI) as “the eyes of our ocean” — also drew criticism. Amo argued that shutting down the program would leave coastal communities with less time to prepare for storms. NOAA’s budget request also proposes terminating the Sea Grant program, which funds coastal and marine research through universities nationwide. Amo said that in 2024 alone, a $94 million federal investment in the Sea Grant program generated approximately $1.5 billion in economic benefits and supported more than 21,000 jobs. “Cutting that is not saving money,” he said. “It’s costing us opportunity.”

The Trump administration’s decision last year to restructure NOAA’s next-generation GeoXO geostationary satellite program also came under fire during the hearing, with Rep. Lofgren calling out contract cancellations and infrastructure changes that she said happened “without any real analysis or assessment” and no effort to inform Congress prior to decisions being made. Environment Subcommittee Chair Scott Franklin (R-FL) noted, however, in his opening statement, that he was pleased to see NOAA proposing “expanded procurement of commercially available data,” a goal that he said has long been supported by the committee and is reflected in the bipartisan Weather Act Reauthorization Act of 2025, which was passed by the House last year. Chairman Babin said the committee is closely following the Senate’s progress on this legislation, adding he is “very encouraged to see that the language in these two bills is not very far apart.”