I occasionally post informational emails from the American Astronomical Society. Here's the latest on the federal astronomy budget, FYI.
AAS Informational Email 2006-03
The President's FY 2007 Budget for Astronomy
Jack Burns, Chair, AAS Committee for Astronomy and Public
Policy and Kevin Marvel, Deputy Executive Officer
SUMMARY
The President's budget for FY2007 contains both good news
and bad. On the good-news front, through the President's
American Competitiveness Initiative, NSF is slated to
receive a 7.8% increase and the Department of Energy's
Office of Science is slated to receive a 14% increase.
Astronomy and Astrophysics programs funded through these
agencies can expect increases if the Congress approves the
President's Budget. On the negative side, the NASA budget
contains significant cuts to many basic research programs,
including those in the three NASA directorates that strongly
support members of the AAS. The AAS Committee on Astronomy
and Public Policy and the elected leaders of the AAS are
working diligently to carefully develop a year- Long
strategy to enforce the portions of the President's budget
that contain good news and reverse the portions that contain
cuts. This email provides a quick overview of the budget
situation and outlines the broad themes guiding the
development of the AAS strategy that will be communicated to
AAS members in subsequent ACTION ALERT emails.
DETAILS
On Monday, 6 February 2006, President Bush submitted his
budget to Congress. A more detailed summary of the budget
will be available on the AAS Policy web pages at
www.aas.org/policy, as this summary is just meant to touch
on the very top-level items.
The good news is that the President has undertaken an
initiative, first announced in his State of the Union
address, dubbed the "American Competitiveness Initiative".
A (many MB) brochure highlighting the program can be
downloaded from www.ostp.gov/html/ACIBooklet.pdf and a fact
sheet is available at
www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/01/20060131-5.html
The core of the ACI is a tax break for American companies
that invest in R&D, the so-called "research and
experimentation tax credit", which provides tax reductions
for mainly large companies that invest certain amounts in
certain types of R&D. A smaller portion of the ACI is an
increase in funding for three of the core science agencies,
NSF, DOE Office of Science and NIST. From a cost standpoint,
the tax break costs taxpayers about 75% of the total ACI
cost and the increases to the agency budgets are the
remaining 25%. The obvious missing piece from this agenda is
NASA. Luckily, a large number of senators, led by Senators
Domenici, Alexander, Bingaman and Mikulski have sought to
rectify this problem in the Preserving America's Competitive
Edge act via a suite of bills that put into law many of the
recommendations from the "Rising Above the Gathering Storm"
report from the National Academy. Of note is S.R. 2198, the
PACE-Education act, which includes authorization for a 10%
increase through
2013 for NASA basic research funding in the various science
directorates. With 53 co-sponsors and more signing on daily,
it is likely this bill will pass. The task for the space
science community is to convert this authorization into
appropriations. (Note: thank you notes to these four
senators and any of the bill co-sponsors for introducing the
legislation might be a good idea for concerned space
scientists.)
The President's Science advisor Jack Marburger spoke at a
special OSTP budget roll-out briefing and highlighted the
various percentages up and down, with the near-term news
being a 7.8% increase for NSF. Also of note is the 14%
increase for DOE's Office of Science. NIST got an increase
as well, though confusingly it is listed as a negative
increase in the ACI brochure, which I thought implied a
decrease, but actually one must compensate for the highly
earmarked NIST budget when adding funding (don't blame me, I
just work in this town, I don't write the documents).
The long-term goal is to double these three agencies'
research portfolios by 2016 from their FY2006 levels.
Twenty to thirty percent of this increase is due to
inflation alone, but it still represents a significant
governmental commitment to basic research compared to past
years.
The NASA outlook was not so rosy. Numerous programs in the
Science Mission Directorate (SMD) received reductions.
Overall the NASA budget request for FY 2007 goes up 3.2% to
$16.8B. This total and the increase ignores the emergency
spending money provided to NASA for hurricane recovery
activities. The SMD request is $5.3B, up roughly 1.5% from
FY 2006. Given current rates of inflation, this represents a
decline in the overall SMD budget. Although some in the
administration would defend the SMD budget as being larger
now than it has been in the past, the harsh reality is that
(as a fraction of NASA's overall budget) with full-cost
accounting and other issues, some would argue that less
funding is available in real terms today than was available
a decade or so ago.
A few specific reductions need to be highlighted:
. SOFIA is zeroed out for FY 2007 pending a close-out
review of the program
. TPF is deferred indefinitely.
. Research in Solar System Exploration drops from
$327M in 2006 to a proposed level of $274M for 2007
. The Navigator program drops from $145M if 2006 to
$128M in 2007
. SIM drops from $117M in 2006 to $99M in 2007
. GLAST drops from $126M in 2006 to $85M in 2007
. The Discovery program within the Astrophysics
Division drops from $138M in 2006 to $101M in 2007
. The Explorer program within the Astrophysics
Division drops from $85M in 2006 to $68M in 2007
. The Living with a Star program drops from $239M in
2006 to $226M in 2007
. The Solar-Terrestrial Probes program drops from $94M
in 2006 to $84M in 2007
. The Explorer program drops from $130M in 2006 to
$73M in 2007
. Research in the Sun-Earth Division drops from $882M
in 2006 to $878M in 2007
Some programs did see growth however:
. Discovery within Solar System Exploration grows from
$146M in 2006 to $162M in 2007
. New Frontiers grows from $148M in 2006 to $155M in
2007
. The Mars program grows from $650M in 2006 to $700M
in 2007
. JWST grows from $364M in 2006 to $443M in 2007
. HST grows from $267M in 2006 to $337M in 2007
. Research grows from $305M in 2006 to $307M in 2007
. International programs in Astrophysics, including
Herschel and Planck funding grows from $13M in 2006 to $20M
in 2007
. Beyond Einstein grows from $14M in 2006 to $21M in
2007
All of these numbers are relative to the 2006 funded level
provided in documents released by the President, and do not
reflect any modifications to the NASA operating plan.
Additionally, they do not reference the planned 2007 budget
from past year budgets (the so-called out-year funding
levels). If they did, where the President has proposed the
funding level to be this year would stand in stark contrast
to the past plans.
The AAS Executive Committee and the Committee on Astronomy
and Public Policy are actively working on a policy response
to the budget proposal. Remember that the President proposes
while the Congress disposes. A strongly worded statement
from the chairman of the House Science Committee,
Representative Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY),
(www.house.gov/science) deplored the cuts to NASA's science
programs and pledged to help NASA science during the
appropriations process. Get ready for a long, hot summer.