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CONGRESS
A huge omnibus federal spending bill, including $328 billion in discretionary spending, was passed by the House last week but put on hold by the Senate. The bill includes fiscal 2004 funding for research and technology at NIH, NASA, NSF, EPA, and the Departments of Agriculture and Commerce.
Overall R&D spending for fiscal 2004 will rise $9.3 billion above 2003 to $127 billion, but most of the increase ($6.3 billion) goes to the Department of Defense's weapons systems development programs. R&D at the Department of Homeland Security will receive a major boost of $375 million to total $1 billion, and NIH will get about a 3% increase to $27.1 billion. NSF is slated for an increase of $268 million, to $5.6 billion, for 2004. This is about $1 billion short of the amount authorized in a bill enacted last year seeking to double NSF's budget by fiscal 2007. Some of the remaining R&D agencies will face modest declines. For example, R&D at USDA will decrease 5% to $2.2 billion, and NASA will see an R&D cut of 0.4% to $11 billion. The omnibus bill is also loaded with earmarks. About 7,000 congressionally designated, performer-specific projects totaling $7.5 billion are said to be in the bill. An analysis of R&D earmarks by the American Association for the Advancement of Science finds $1.9 billion set aside for research projects. |
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