“Support the same kind of research and innovation that led to the computer chip and the Internet, to new American jobs and new American industries,” he urged Congress.

Read the entire APS statement commending the President’s emphasis on research and innovation.

After partisan divides almost caused a government shutdown over the FY12 budget it is anyone’s guess as to what decisions need to be finalized.  President Obama has already warned that Democrats will not like his budget plan, an indication that some of those decisions that need to be finalized are in regards to cuts in funding.  With across-the-board sequestrations looming for FY13 appropriations next January and with conservatives pushing back against mandated defense cuts, non-defense programs covering most of science are already bracing for difficult times.

Despite aggressive requests from the Obama Administration and the Department of Energy’s Office of Science, the House in the most recent appropriations debate made significant efforts to reduce funding for climate-related science. The Senate prevailed in the subsequent negotiations, and nearly all Office of Science programs received modest funding increases.

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While partisan politics was on full display throughout the process, key concessions from Republicans about policy riders and funding for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau paved the way toward common ground in reaching a final agreement.

Despite the treacherous political landscape, federal funding for science did as well as the previously passed Commerce, Justice, and Science (CJS) appropriations bill.   As with CJS, however, future funding levels are likely to decrease as the Budget Control Act mandates sequestrations to all federal accounts beginning in Fiscal Year (FY) 2013.

The nine appropriations bills passed include details on the funding for the Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science, Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the Department of Defense (DOD) Basic and Applied Research.

The breakdown of funding follows:

• DOE Office of Science (Total) [$4.84B in FY11] – $4.89B (+0.96%)
• Advanced Scientific Computing Research [$422M in FY11] – $442M (+4.74%)
• Basic Energy Sciences [$1.68B in FY11] – $1.69B (+0.94%)
• Biological and Environmental Research [$612M in FY11] – $612M (+0.0%)
• Fusion Energy Sciences [$376M in FY11] – $402M (+7.12%)
• High Energy Physics [$796M in FY11] – $792M (-0.47%)
• Nuclear Physics [$540M in FY11] – $550M (+1.83%)

• ARPA-E [$180M in FY11] – $275M (+53.08%)
• EERE [$1.80B in FY11] – $1.82B (+1.64%)
• NIH (Total) [$30.69B in FY11]* – $30.64B (+0.82%)
• DOD 6.1 (Basic) [$1.95B in FY11] – $2.1B (+8.73%)
• DOD 6.2 (Applied) [$4.45B in FY11] – $4.7B (+6.62%)

ARPA-E  experienced a significant increase of 53% in funding while most other accounts were modestly increased.  NIH technically received an increase due to restructuring of funding for contributions to the Global AIDS Project.  One caveat is that all awarded grants from NIH must now reflect the uncertainty of multi-year funding – a sure sign of the uncertainty of future budgets.

Overall, this is good news for the science community.  The efforts of the science community weighing in on these budget issues has certainly helped maintain robust federal funding.

*The $30.69B includes a $297M transfer to the Global Aids project, thus the actual FY11 NIH budget was $30.39B.

BUDGET SEQUESTRATIONS

Potential funding cuts will be triggered a year from now in the form of automatic across-the board reductions – technically called sequestrations – mandated by the 2011 amendments to the Budget Control Act (BCA) of 1985.  According to the amended BCA, the recent failure of the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction to come to an agreement on a debt reduction plan, will initiate $1.2 trillion in sequestrations over nine years, beginning with Fiscal Year 2013.  The effect on science funding is not yet known, since the sequestrations will apply to appropriations bills that have yet to be written.  However, once Congress has acted and the bills have been signed into law next year, sequestrations will automatically reduce defense appropriations by 11% and every account in non-defense appropriations by ~8%, effective January 2, 2013.  For example, if appropriators choose to increase the National Science Foundation’s Research and Related Activities (R&RA) account by 2% in the Fiscal Year 2013 CJS bill, their action would result in a 6% decrease in the R&RA account at the start of calendar year 2013.

BUDGET CAPS

In addition to triggering sequestrations, the BCA amendments mandate caps for overall discretionary spending over a ten-year period beginning with Fiscal Year 2012.  Appropriators must adhere to those caps in the aggregate, but they may alter individual accounts to reflect their priorities.  As a result, Congress has the ability to increase science funding relative to other accounts but it will do so only if lawmakers believe the rationale is compelling.

LOOKING AHEAD

During the next year you will have ample opportunity to contact your representatives in Congress and impress upon them why science funding is important.  Doing so through visits, phone calls, and letters will let them know their constituents care about these issues.  If enough voices combine together, Congress will hear the message.

• Require all federal executive agencies to use merit-based procedures in awarding grants (with some exceptions);
• Make public the selection procedures for each grant program, including how proposals are evaluated, ranked, and selected;
• Before making an award, assess the adequacy of a grant applicant’s financial management system, internal controls, and reporting and compliance systems; and
• Require the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to create a single, comprehensive website for all federal grant opportunities.

 The most troublesome section of the bill would require OMB to publicly post the name, title, and employer of all individuals who served as reviewers of the grant program for the six months preceding the award. The same information would be required of peer reviewers of the awarded grant.

The bill’s sponsors, who include the House Oversight Committee Chairman, Congressman Darryl Issa, and Congressman James Lankford, introduced the bill to create transparency in the federal grant process. Unfortunately, the legislators are unaware of the damage it would cause to scientific research.

The bill appears to be on a fast track through the House.  It was introduced on November 16^th by Congressman Lankford and was marked up and voted out of the Oversight Committee the very next day.  Moreover, it is possible that the bill will be considered and passed on the floor before the House adjourns for the holidays, given the support of Congressman Issa.

While this does not necessarily mean the bill would make it through the Senate – a companion bill has not been introduced, and the Senate’s plate is full through the end of the session – passage of this bill in the House would set a dangerous precedent by permitting the politicization of the objective scientific peer review process and undermining the credibility of science more generally.

The APS Office of Public Affairs is actively engaged on this matter and will keep APS members apprised of developments related to this bill.

As popular science blogger PZ Myers puts it, “People who do outreach are regarded as second-class citizens in the science world” [1].  However, this statement lies in stark contrast to a recent research study of European scientists.  It states:  “Scientists who are active in dissemination [outreach activities] are also more active academically” [2].

The study, by Jensen et al., presents key findings regarding the benefits of scientific outreach on scientists’ careers.

Among the findings:

• Scientists connected with society are more active academically than average.
•  Outreach activity increases as a function of position.
•  There is a significant correlation between academic record (an increase in the Hirsch index) and industrial collaborations.
• Across most disciplines, outreach and popularizations of science are weakly but positively correlated with promotions.

While there is certainly room for interpretation of these results, this study should be cited to dispel the many myths surrounding spending time on outreach and advocacy.  In fact, the next step suggested by the study is to “invent new ways of evaluating and rewarding the active scientists.”  Truly, reward and recognition for the civil duty of scientists is long overdue.

1. Otto, S. 2011. Macmillan. Fool Me Twice: Fighting the Assault on Science in America.
2. Jensen, P, Rouquier, JB, Kreimer, P, Croissant, Y.  2008. 35. 7. Science and Public Policy. Scientists who engage with society perform better academically.

However, given the impending failure of the supercommittee to agree on cuts, and the potential for sequestration that will trigger across-the-board cuts to the federal budget in Fiscal Year 2013, the bump up both agencies received may be the last we see for quite a while.

On Friday, Nov. 18^th, the President signed the first FY 2012 “minibus” spending bill, which combined the Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies bill with appropriations for Agriculture, Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and Transportation. The bill, H.R. 2112, provides funding for the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Institutes of Standards and Technology (NIST), the National Aeronautic and Space Administration (NASA) and the Office of Science and Technology (OSTP).

It also includes another short-term continuing resolution (CR) to keep the government running until December 16^th, allowing Congress additional time to complete the remaining FY 2012 spending bills. The funding breakdown is as follows:

• NSF: $7.03 billion, $173 million above FY 2011
• NASA: $17.8 billion, $648 million below FY 2011 (but science account was increased 3%)
• NIST: $751 million, $33 million above FY 2011.
• OSTP: $4.5 million, $2.1 million below FY 2011.

Additional breakdowns can be found in the conference report.  Science funding appears in Title III of the legislation. The bill included an unexpected increase for NSF, beyond both the House- and Senate-passed levels. The James Webb Telescope at NASA, which was cut by the House and funded by the Senate, was included in the final bill. OSTP received a significant cut, stemming from a dispute between OSTP Director John Holdren and Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA), Chairman of the House Appropriations Commerce-Justice-Science Subcommittee, over collaboration with China. However, the cut was not as deep as what Wolf leveled at OSTP in the House version of the CJS bill.

The Senate tried to move another minibus this week, which would have included the Energy and Water Development, State-Foreign Operations, and Financial Services bills, though a series of problematic amendments derailed that effort.

It now looks like FY 2012 will be completed by wrapping the nine remaining appropriations bills together in a “midibus,” using the DoD appropriations bill as the vehicle.

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