News & Views item - February 2007

 

 

President George W Bush Sends His FY 2008 Budget Request to Congress -- Maths, Physics & Chemistry Get a Boost. (February 11, 2007)

    This past week US President George W Bush submitted his proposed budget for FY 2008 (US fiscal years begin October 1, i.e. FY 2008 runs from October 1, 2007 - September 30, 2008).

 

The short of it is that President Bush has asked Congress to increase overall FY 2008 funding for the National Science Foundation, Department of Energy Office of Science, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology core research program by 7.2% over his request of a year ago.

 

It should noted that  because of unfinished business from the last Congress, matters are somewhat chaotic regarding budget allocations for the current year (FY 2007) which have yet to be
finalised by the now Democratically controlled 110th Congress, so funding is still running on last year's funding regime.

 

The House of Representatives has just passed a final FY 2007 funding bill while the Senate is scheduled to begin consideration of the resolution within the next few days.

 

Under the Administration's American Competitiveness Initiative, which stipulates a doubling of total funding for the three agencies over ten years beginning 2006, annual increases of approximately 7 percent are required to maintain this schedule.

 

The president's FY 2007 funding request for the three agencies was US$10.7 billion and the FY 2008 request is up US$764 million to ~US$11.5 billion.

 

However, according to the American Institute of Physics (AIP), "It is expected that final appropriations for the three agencies will be... significantly less than last year’s request. At a White House briefing yesterday, a senior Administration official cautioned that the resulting FY 2008 percentage rate increases for the three agencies would be 'a difficult lift' on Capitol Hill."

 

 

The AIP summarises the proposed budget:

The Office of Management and Budget states growth in total non-security discretionary spending would increase under the FY 2008 request. The following are selected programs of interest; percentages are taken from an OMB document and have been rounded:

- National Science Foundation funding would increase 7 percent over the FY 2007 request.

- DOE Office of Science funding would increase 7 percent over the FY 2007 request.

- NIST intramural research and facilities funding would increase 11 percent.

- U.S. Geological Survey funding would increase 3 percent.

- National Institutes of Health funding would increase 2 percent.

NASA budget documents show that under the request:

- NASA (total) funding would increase 3.1 percent.

- NASA Science funding would increase 0.9 percent

- NASA Exploration Capabilities funding would increase 11.2 percent

Also:

- Defense Basic Research Funding would decline 8 percent from the enacted current budget.

From what TFW has been told, US physical and mathematical scientists are cautiously hopeful while the NIH, the principal source of public funding for biomedical research, has been held to below projected inflation, and there would be a significant cut of 8% for "Defense Basic Research Funding".

 

Make-up of the US Senate

Make-up of US House of Representatives