October 1 marked the official start of the United States fiscal year 2022 (FY22). Congress did not complete action on appropriations before the end of FY21 on September 30. To avoid a shutdown, Congress passed and President Joe Biden signed two continuing resolutions to fund the government through December 3 and February 18, respectively.
Since Democrats took control of both the House and Senate by very slim margins in the 2021 election, a major focus for Congress has been the development of two special spending bills that are meant to fulfill many of Biden’s promises during the 2020 campaign. The $1.2 trillion bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which Biden signed into law on November 15, focuses on investments in transportation and other infrastructure, such as roads, railways, bridges, and broadband internet.
The second bill, called Build Back Better, focuses on social and climate spending, and it faces more opposition to passage. Biden originally proposed $3.5 trillion for the bill but has since scaled it back to $1.75 trillion. The House passed the bill on November 19, and it is now in the Senate for negotiations.
With the attention these two special spending bills have received, negotiations on the FY22 appropriations bills are running behind schedule. However, at this point, both the House and Senate have released all their proposals, so reconciliation between the two houses of Congress can begin.
The Senate and House bills both seek significant boosts across science programs, including double-digit percentage increases for the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, and National Institute of Standards and Technology, among other agencies. But there are points of disagreement that need to be resolved. Senate appropriators seek to increase funding for early-stage defense R&D, whereas the House and White House propose cuts. Conversely, Senate appropriators are proposing considerably smaller increases for the Advanced Research Projects Agency– Energy and U.S. Geological Survey than the increases proposed by the House.
A few highlights from the proposals:
Department of Defense
The Department of Defense’s research, development, test, and evaluation (RDT&E) budget would increase by 2% or 7%, respectively, in fiscal year 2022 based on proposals from the House and Senate. However, appropriators split ways in their proposals for funding the Department of Defense’s Science and Technology portfolio under RDT&E, with the House proposing a 5% cut to the current $16.9 billion topline and the Senate a 5% increase. The Senate proposes a particularly large boost for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, seeking a 12% increase to just under $4 billion, while the House proposes flat funding for the agency.
National Science Foundation
House and Senate appropriators propose raising the current $8.5 billion annual budget of the National Science Foundation by about $1 billion in fiscal year 2022, which is short of the $1.7 billion increase the White House requested.
Both bills support the proposal to create a new, technology-focused NSF directorate, which has received widespread bipartisan support. The Senate report directs NSF to allocate up to $865 million for the directorate in its first year, matching the agency’s proposed level, while the House report does not specify an amount. Congress is still debating legislation to formally authorize the directorate and define its role in statute.
Department of Energy
The White House requested to increase DOE’s budget from $39.6 billion to $46.2 billion. Both the House and Senate proposals are in line with the request, with recommended increases to the total budget being $45.1 billion and $45.3 billion, respectively.
Office of Science
House and Senate appropriators propose raising the DOE Office of Science budget 4% and 7%, respectively, to $7.3 billion and $7.5 billion. The topline differences between the proposals are most pronounced for the Nuclear Physics and Fusion Energy Sciences programs. The House proposes to increase funding for Fusion Energy Sciences by 4% to $698 million, while the Senate proposes a 2% cut to $660 million for the program, reflecting a proposed reduction in the U.S. contribution to construction of the international ITER facility. In contrast, the Energy Act of 2020 recommends that Congress fund the program at nearly $1 billion in fiscal year 2022 to accommodate increased contributions to ITER as well as a pivot toward laying groundwork for a U.S.-based fusion power industry.
Applied energy R&D
For fiscal year 2022, the White House asked Congress to significantly expand the applied research, development, and demonstration programs’ annual budgets. The responding proposals from House and Senate appropriators mostly do not meet the requested amounts, though they still provide major increases across most programs. Both proposals deny the administration’s request to move forward with design work on a new, multibilliondollar nuclear energy R&D facility called the Versatile Test Reactor. They also reject the administration’s request to create an Advanced Research Projects Agency for climate-related R&D, citing the absence of the legislative authorization needed to set up a new agency.
National Nuclear Security Administration
Following five years of rapid growth, the NNSA budget would level off near $20 billion under the House’s and Senate’s spending proposals for fiscal year 2022. However, among NNSA R&D programs, the House and Senate proposals do significantly exceed the administration’s request in areas such as stockpile assessment science and inertial confinement fusion.
National Institute of Standards and Technology
House and Senate appropriators propose increasing the $1 billion annual budget of the National Institute of Standards and Technology by more than 30%. The increases are among the highest in percentage terms proposed across science agencies this budget cycle, though they fall short of the 45% increase requested by the White House.
This budget cycle is the first since 2011 that appropriators permitted earmarks for particular projects. The Senate report earmarks $38 million to fund 20 projects at universities across the U.S. The House Appropriations Committee also permitted earmarks but made none for NIST.
Outside the regular appropriations process, NIST may benefit from special spending legislation currently under development. There is a bipartisan push to spend $52 billion on domestic semiconductor manufacturing and R&D over five years to implement initiatives recently authorized through the CHIPS for America Act. Of this total, the Senatepassed U.S. Innovation and Competition Act (USICA) would allocate $3 billion directly to NIST for semiconductor R&D in fiscal year 2022 alone, with further funding in future years. The House has not yet indicated if it will follow suit in providing this funding.
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
House and Senate proposals for NASA’s fiscal year 2022 science budget are in near agreement with the administration’s proposal to increase the budget from $7.30 billion to $7.93 billion, with the House providing about $40 million more than that and the Senate $30 million less.
The Planetary Science and Earth Science Divisions are in line for particularly significant increases under both proposals. However, there remains some doubt over the fate of the SOFIA airborne telescope because House appropriators rejected the administration’s proposal to terminate it; Senate appropriators have not ruled it out.
National Institutes of Health
Senate appropriators proposes a $5 billion increase to $49.4 billion for the National Institutes of Health while the House proposes an even larger boost of $6.5 billion. Either amount would represent by far the largest increase among the string of multibillion dollar boosts in each of the past six years.
Both bills strongly support the administration’s proposal to fund an Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA–H) but allocate less than half the $6.5 billion the administration requested for it. They stipulate that the funds are contingent on Congress passing legislation that formally authorizes the agency, but development of authorization legislation for ARPA–H is still at an early stage.
For more information on the federal budget, visit the American Institute of Physics FYI “Budget Tracker” at https://www.aip.org/fyi/federal-sciencebudget- tracker.
Data from the American Institute of Physics FYI “Federal Science Budget Tracker.” Table created by The American Ceramic Society.
