I reported a couple months ago that on December 18 Congress passed the FY 2016 Omnibus spending bill—twelve appropriation bills rolled into one. It boosts funding for essentially all science agencies and offices this year.
It is already time for the debate to start on the FY 2017 appropriations, covering from October 1, 2016 through September 30, 2017.
The first steps are:
- Congress passes a budget — an outline of its spending priorities. There is no set time for passing a budget, and a budget is not even required. The President does not sign it, and Congress can revise or revoke it. Last year Congress approved a two-year, FY 2016-FY 2017 budget. Fiscal conservatives find that budget too extravagant and want to scrap it.
- The President sent Congress his proposed FY 2017 spending plan on February 9. Congress will mark up its appropriation bills as changes to the President’s proposal.
This year the President used a novel approach to ask for more spending than allowed under the budget caps—additional mandatory funding.
Federal R&D spending in FY 2016 is $146.1 billion — in a $1.15 trillion discretionary budget. The discretionary plus mandatory budget — including Social Security, Medicare and payment on the national debt — is pushing $4 trillion this year.
For FY 2017 the President proposes $152.3 billion in R&D, an increase of $6.2 billion, $4 billion of which will be mandatory spending.
About Mandatory Funding
Each annual spending plan includes discretionary spending, which is subject to annual appropriations and the budget cap, and mandatory spending, which is not subject to the budget cap but requires separate legislation and is subject to the pay-as-you-go rules that require that spending be offset by cuts, or deficit neutral.
A previous mandatory oil and gas R&D program was the Research Partnership to Secure Energy for America (RPSEA). The Energy Policy Act of 2005 designated $50 million per year of oil and gas rents and royalties from federal lands for a competitively selected consortium for six years. The RPSEA consortium conducted research for small producers, ultra-deepwater, and unconventional oil and gas.
The President’s budget proposes several sources of income to offset the proposed spending increases. One is a $10.25 per barrel tax on oil consumed in the US. It seems clear that Congress will not agree to this tax.
President's Proposed $4.2 Trillion Total Spending (FY 2017)
Among Proposals in the President’s FY 2017 budget:
- The Department of Defense R&D would get $80 billion, an increase of 4.4 percent. All non-defense R&D would get $72.4 billion.
- The National Institutes of Health, the largest non-defense research agency, would get $33.1 billion.
- $1.2 billion would be allocated for the U.S. Geological Survey, an increase of $138 million. The programs that would get the largest increases are Ecosystems, and Climate and Land Use.
- The Department of Energy Office of Science (fundamental research) would get $5.7 billion; among the applied research programs, Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy would receive $2.898 billion; Fossil Energy would get $600 million, and Nuclear Energy would get $994 million.
- The National Science Foundation would receive $8 billion, an increase of about 7 percent.
Image courtesy of National Priorities Project.