Biomedicine, defense to sidestep budget ax A massive tax cut, a record defense

budget, and a swipe at the congressional pork barrel are putting the squeeze on most categories of science and technolo- gy funding for next year.

In President Bush’s fiscal year (FY) 2002 budget request, released April 9, overall research and development (R&D) funding would grow bv 3.7 Dercent. to $95.1 billion

partment oversees NIH, acknowledged that many science administrators consid- er the NIH boost out of balance. Still, he argues, “we feel that this money [would be] well-spent.’’

Congress is already showing concern over the president’s R&D plan. “We’d pre- fer higher spending for R&D agencies other than the NIH.” comments David Goldston.

chief of staff of the House Science Committee.

Along with NIH re- searchers, military sci- entists and engineers would enjoy a windfall. Their 6.5 percent fund- 1 ine hike to $45.2 billion

in 2002. Nonetheless, 8

come out a winner. The President’s pro-

posal for NIH is $23.1 billion, up from $20.4 billion in 2001. After budget figures are ad- justed for an expected inflation rate of 2.1 per- cent, that’s still an in- crease of 11.4 percent.

based infrared telescope and a mission to test general relativity, says NASA Adminis- trator Daniel S. Goldin.

Only 1 year after a 17 percent R&D in- crease, the National Science Foundation (NSF) is OK with its proposed 3.8 percent cut, says NSF Director Rita R Colwell. “We found nothing negative to NSF [in the pres- ident’s proposal]. Quite the contrary, we feel that our strongest needs were met.”

Those needs include funding to improve science and math education and to relieve the fiscal plight of underfunded graduate students. NSF plans to launch a 5-year, $1 billion program to forge ties between uni- versities and local schools.

As in the overall R&D budget, the dis- tribution of money within the Energy De- partment tilts in favor of military-related Droerams. The deDartment would devote

A research unit of the National Zoo, which has reestablished populations of nearextinct animals such as this blackfooted ferret, would lose all funding in the President’s FY2002 buaet request.

w&ld raise the mili- tary’s share of the feder- al R&D budget by more than 1 percent, to 47.5 percent. Under the Clin- ton administration, mili-

530% million, or $60 million more than last year, t o studies related to stockpiled nuclear weapons. Funding for a huge nu- clear-fusion laser called the National Igni- tion Facility would also grow by $37 mil- lion, to $245 million.

In contrast, all other nonmilitary R&D agencies would take cuts of nearly 4 to 10 percent.

“Dismay, utter dismay” has descended on the scientific communities whose funding agencies face the knife, says Kei Koizumi, director of the R&D budget and policy program at the American Associa- tion for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Washington, D.C.

“This is not what I would call a pro-sci- ence or forward-looking budget,” laments Michael S. Lubell, spokesman for the Amer- ican Physical Society in Washington, D.C.

The one-sided jump in biomedical funding flies in the face of a campaign in recent years by representatives of the physical sciences, in particular, to push for “a more balanced portfolio,” Koizumi notes. Health and Human Services Secre- tary Tommy G. Thompson, whose de-

- tary research and devel-

opment funds toppled from 58 percent of the R&D pie to just over 46 percent last year.

Defense planners have yet to decide how to spend the extra research bucks. “We’re a bit of an oddball in the budget world to- day,” confesses Pentagon spokesperson Su- san Hansen. Until a review of military spending ends this spring, details will re- main scarce, she says.

Spending by NASA on the International Space Station would hold steady at just over $2 billion. To fend off projected cost overruns, the budget proposal chops fund- ing pegged for living and escape modules and for some research.

NASA is also eliminating a flyby of the planet Pluto and a sun-watching satellite called Solar Probe. Those cuts were a trade-off made to keep Mars missions well- funded and to cover overruns in a space-

Meanwhile, preliminary numbers show nondefense R&D sinking by about $350 million. Nearly all the losses would come from broad cuts to the department’s en- ergy-research programs. At the same time, the administration plans to kick off a 10-year, $2 billion research program to develop clean power from coal.

Hit hardest by the administration’s spending restraints would be those agen- cies with the smallest R&D budgets: Com- merce, Interior, Agriculture and the Envi- ronmental Protection Agency.

Long a target of Republicans as a form of corporate welfare, the Advanced Tech- nology Program of the Commerce Depart- ment’s National Institute of Standards and Technology would plummet from $145 mil- lion to scarcely $13 million-just enough to maintain existing programs until they close down. The program sponsors cut- tingedge technology development in in- dustry. Also taking a plunge would be the budget of the Interior Department’s US. Geological Survey (USGS). Much of the USGS’s proposed budget cut of $69 million would come from funding intended for wa- terquality studies and other research.

Steep reductions in research at the Agriculture Department and EPA would come largely from the administration’s vow to cease funding so-called ear- marks-projects known pejoratively as pork-barrel spending-which members of Congress slip into the budget. This tough stand has also affected other R&D budgets, particularly at NASA and Energy.

Past experience, however, indicates that when a President eliminates ear- marks in his initial budget, money for the deleted projects often creeps back into the final budget. Notes Lubell of the American Physical Society, mem- bers of Congress “control the purse strings, and they’re going to do what they want to do.” -F? Weiss

APRIL 14,2001 SCIENCE NEWS, VOL. 159 23 1