President Barack Obama has drawn a line in the sand in his ongoing fight with budget-cutting lawmakers when it comes to future federal funding for research and development. He’s calling for reversing recent spending cuts to most sectors of R&D spending and adding new funds for many areas next year — despite tough fiscal times.
The president’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2014, which starts in October, would boost federal dollars for civilian R&D by 9 percent compared with 2012, before accounting for inflation. Defense R&D would take a 6 percent cut, mostly in development and applied research. R&D funding overall would rise about 1 percent, from $140.9 billion in 2012 to $142.8 billion in 2014. That’s actually a modest decrease after adjusting for the estimated 4 percent inflation over the period.
The Obama budget uses 2012 rather than 2013 as the baseline for comparison for procedural reasons. So the plan does not factor in the sequester — Washington-speak for a series of recent automatic spending cuts that reduce research funding by about 8 percent between now and 2017. That means Obama’s proposed R&D funding increases could be considered even bigger, because they assume the sequester cuts will be reversed.
Obama has repeatedly called for boosting research funding (with modest success); this year is no exception. The proposal is largely symbolic, however, standing little chance of getting enough support in a divided Congress. The House science committee’s chairman, Republican Lamar Smith of Texas, says that the budget “gets a failing grade,” in part because it boosts spending in a time of mounting debt.