There's less than a year before President Barack Obama steps down from office and he's making the most out of that time by pushing for increased funding for scientific research. Specifically, he's calling for a 4-percent spike, according to his budget plan for fiscal year 2017.
This sounds like good news for the scientific community but advocates are actually worried about Obama's decision, not because he's looking to give researchers more support to their work, but rather in the way he's planning to make the budget increase happen.
Typically, research funding is tagged as discretionary. This means that Congress gets to decide how much a certain agency will be getting. However, Obama is looking to increase science funding by turning to mandatory spending.
The problem here is that it's hard to get lawmakers to support mandatory programs because dedicating specific revenue streams for the programs would decrease their control over annual spending. For mandatory programs to be approved, Congress would have to determine and agree upon dedicated revenue streams for specific programs. For example, the oil tax the president proposed could be used to fund clean transportation initiatives.
According to Matt Hourihan from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, mandatory spending is problematic because it is often considered better as a supplement and not as a long-term solution.
Say, if Congress doesn't adopt Obama's budget proposal for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the agency's funding would drop $1 billion. However, lawmakers have been prioritizing spending for science and technology wherever possible so it may still be possible for agencies like the NIH to escape budget cuts.
How much did Obama request for science agencies?
He's requesting $33.1 billion for the NIH. This is a 2.6-percent increase from the agency's 2016 budget, but includes some $1.8 billion in mandatory funding to cover the major cut to the discretionary budget of the NIH.
For the National Science Foundation (NSF), Obama is requesting $8 billion, a jump of 6.7 percent from the agency's 2016 estimate. However, $400 million of this total is locked in mandatory spending. Without additional funding, the NSF's budget will only increase by 1.3 percent or $101 million.
NASA's budget request is $19 billion, a $300-million drop from what the agency got in 2016. While its science division will get flat funding at $5.6 billion, NASA's Earth Science division will get a boost of $111 million, bringing its funding total to $2 billion. Unfortunately, the Planetary Science division will see a cut, ending up with $1.5 billion.
For the Food and Drug Administration, the president has requested a budget of $5.1 billion, an 8-percent increase from the agency's 2016 funding. Majority of the increase will be collected from fees levied on stakeholders in the industry, like pharmaceutical companies and food producers.
