On Feb. 4, President Bush released his last budget blueprint for research-and-development spending. It proposes investing $146.9 billion in fiscal year 2009, which begins on Oct. 1 of this year. That's 3 percent more than the administration expects to spend in the current fiscal year—until you account for inflation, which the Office of Management and Budget expects will run about 2 percent over the current fiscal year.

Non-defense R&D spending would climb 4 percent in the new budget, after adjusting for inflation. Some large programs would climb considerably more. The administration proposes spending $2 billion for climate-change science across 11 federal agencies, an inflation-adjusted increase of 8 percent. Another $3.6 billion would go for an eight-agency initiative to boost networking and information technology—an inflation-adjusted increase of roughly 4 percent. Meanwhile, the $1.53 billion requested for a federal government-wide National Nanotechnology Initiative would see no increase after accounting for inflation.

While the National Science Foundation would see a substantial increase, Agriculture Department programs have been targeted for big hits. For instance, the $1 billion proposed for Agricultural Research Service programs is a 9 percent drop, after inflation. USDA's $263 million spending on Forest Service R&D would drop by 10 percent, after inflation.

In some cases, overall agency figures can mask proposals for notable changes. That's the case with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Although its overall funding would climb 2 percent after inflation, the President's budget calls for 14 new initiatives. Together, they'd receive $71.1 million, or roughly 11 percent of the agency's proposed $638 million budget.

Four of these represent proposals that are new this year: a nanotechnology program focusing on environmental and health and safety measurements; a program to accelerate innovation in the biosciences; a Comprehensive National Cyber Security Initiative; and a program that would employ light for technologies to speed computing and communications. Another 10 initiatives—including one on quantum information science, one to develop new "yardsticks" for use in climate-change science, and a hydrogen-fuel research program—had been proposed previously but never funded.

The President would finance this year's contribution for all 14 of these new programs with money that had previously financed NIST's nearly 2-decade-old Manufacturing Extension Partnership. That program—suddenly slated for a shutdown—would get just $4 million this year, a far cry from last year's $89.6 million. According to NIST, this program has a history of working with thousands of manufacturers and delivered "$1.3 billion in cost savings annually."

Of course, none of these numbers are real. They're a spending wish list that will be meddled with substantially in the hands of lawmakers charged with authorizing and appropriating the actual spending in the months to come.

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