Pentagon Budget for Basic Research Gets a Trim, as Legislation Would Cut Nearly All Federal Spending by 1%

By JEFFREY BRAINARD

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Congress is expected to complete a 2006 spending bill for the Defense Department today that will reduce the Pentagon's budget for merit-reviewed, basic research while providing a near-record level of basic-research funds earmarked for specific recipients.

The Pentagon spending bill also contains an across-the-board cut of 1 percent to all its programs as well as to amounts set by Congress this year for other federal programs in separate appropriations bills. The reduction would apply to all discretionary spending, or programs whose spending levels are not automatically set by law. Lawmakers had already agreed to slightly increase or freeze spending for most student aid and scientific research in 2006, so the across-the-board cut would mean that most of those programs will see cuts for the first time since 1982, the last time Congress did such serious belt-tightening (see accompanying article).

The Senate passed the bill on a voice vote on Wednesday night, but in doing so stripped out a controversial provision in the House version of the legislation that would have allowed drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. As a result, the House is scheduled to return today in a pro-forma session to approve the bill again, this time without the Arctic-drilling provision.

Lawmakers have said that increased federal costs for the war in Iraq and hurricane relief required them to trim elsewhere to hold down the federal budget. However, the U.S. House of Representatives this month approved tax cuts totaling more than $90-billion over five years. President Bush is expected to sign the Pentagon bill into law.

The defense spending bill was among the last completed by Congress for the 2006 fiscal year, which began October 1, and thus the measure became a catchall of provisions unrelated to the military, including hurricane-relief funds for colleges on the Gulf Coast (see accompanying article).

As for the Pentagon's basic research, the bill's overall spending for both regular, merit-reviewed projects and for Congressional earmarks will dip to $1.49-billion in 2006, a cut of 1.4 percent from 2005. Basic research involves fundamental studies in science and engineering, and about 60 percent of the military's basic-research money goes to universities. The Defense Department is the third-largest source of funds for academic research, behind the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. And it is a leading source of research money for some disciplines, providing 71 percent of all federal funds for electrical engineering and 46 percent of the money for materials engineering.

The Pentagon also provides money for applied research and technology development, but only a small portion of that money goes to colleges; the rest is for corporations and government labs. That spending, combined with the basic-research category, will total $13.41-billion in 2006, 0.7 percent above 2005. (Mr. Bush proposed cutting the 2005 total by 0.3 percent for 2006.)

Of that total, basic-research spending will amount to 11 percent in 2006. In testimony presented to the U.S. Senate last year, the Association of American Universities said the proportion should be 20 percent, which was the level during the cold war. Such a level would help keep Pentagon technology at the cutting edge, the association said. Instead, it said, basic-research funds declined by 10 to 18 percent, after adjusting for inflation, from 1993 to 2004.

In recent years, Congress has put more money into such research, but instead of expanding funds for merit-reviewed, open competitions, it has ratcheted up spending for earmarks, which are projects that members of Congress secure for their districts, usually for universities or corporations. Lawmakers have placed more earmarks for colleges in the Defense Department's spending bill than in any other agency's, and 2006 apparently will be no exception.

President Bush requested just $1.32-billion for basic research in 2006, which Congress allocated and exceeded by 13 percent. However, it appears that almost all of the extra money -- $172.7-million -- will go to earmarks. The amount requested by the president each year tends to go for merit-based, open competitions because the White House routinely strips all of the Congressional earmarks from the preceding year's appropriation. But Mr. Bush has requested roughly the same amount for Pentagon basic research each year throughout his tenure.

The Defense Department says officially that all of the earmarked funds are distributed on the basis of merit-based reviews. However, the Congressional sponsor of each earmark usually has a specific recipient in mind, and the Pentagon usually respects that intention in doling out the money. Critics say the practice represents pork-barrel spending and circumvents the truly open competitions used by the department and other research agencies to distribute the bulk of their science budgets.

Although the total of Congressional earmarks for military basic research will fall in 2006, relative to 2005, earmarks have exploded in recent years in one particular area -- medical research sponsored by the Army. That category of spending more than doubled from 2003 to 2006, rising from $224.6-million to $469.1-million, according to an analysis by The Chronicle. And the number of earmarked projects more than tripled, from 63 to 204.

Some of the spending in that category goes to study conditions, such as breast cancer and diabetes, that are not limited to the battlefield or the military. Other projects seem exotic. Under the bill, the University of Alaska at Fairbanks would get $2.6-million for a project titled "Hibernation Genomics." Researchers there want to find ways to put human beings into a state similiar to hibernation, slowing down their metabolisms and keeping them alive long enough to give doctors additional time to treat their injuries or illnesses.

Other topics that continued to generate many earmarked projects included nanotechnology. Northwestern University would receive $1-million, under the legislation, for its Institute of Bioengineering and Nanoscience in Advanced Medicine. Another category was research to protect against chemical and biological attacks by terrorists. Within those funds, Boise State University would get $1-million for a project to tag DNA in blood samples, to avoid accidental or deliberate contamination.

Even with the 1 percent, across-the-board cut approved by Congress, the 2006 fiscal year may shape up as a record year for research earmarks across the entire federal budget, with a total of more than $2-billion, according to a preliminary analysis by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The association does not distinguish among earmarks for colleges and for other kinds of recipients. Nor does its total include earmarks going to colleges for purposes other than research.

The defense spending bill also would provide $10.3-million for the National Defense Education Program, which provides scholarships for American citizens to study science and mathematics at the graduate and undergraduate level in fields relevant to national security. The appropriation would expand a $2.5-million pilot program that began in 2005 and was called Science, Mathematics, and Research for Transformation, or Smart. The pilot financed 30 scholarships and fellowships, and the appropriation for 2006 is expected to support at least double that number (The Chronicle, May 13).

Jeffrey Selingo contributed to this article.