This week, President Obama released the budget for 2011, following two years of unprecedented funding — approximately $52.65 billion through 2010 — for the sciences courtesy of the stimulus package, also known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). This was Obama’s first opportunity to determine if he wants to improve science investment and double research and development (R&D) budgets for many of the larger agencies as he had promised on the campaign trail, requiring 8-10 percent budget increases, or a cut in discretionary spending as he recently pledged. In the end, it looks like Obama did a little of both. But some scientists wanted more.
Overall, the FY2011 R&D budget for all federal agencies increased only 0.2 percent from 2010 to $147.7 billion. This includes cuts in defense R&D coupled with increases in nondefense R&D by $3.7 billion. Representatives from the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), an international nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing science around the world, were supportive of the new budget. “The increases proposed for R&D are extremely gratifying, particularly given the freeze for overall domestic spending,” said Alan I. Leshner, AAAS chief executive officer. Within this, the major U.S. science agencies, National Institutes of Health (NIH), the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Department of Energy’s Office of Science, all received increases.
But some advocates for biomedical research wanted more. The NIH, the U.S. biomedical research funding agency, received an additional $1 billion or an approximately 3 percent increase for 2011 resulting in $32 billion. This is considerably lower than the increase some biomedical research groups requested. On Jan. 28, the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB), which represents approximately 90,000 scientists, asked for $37 billion, a 19 percent increase in the NIH 2011 budget. Another organization, Research!America, a biomedical advocacy group funded by universities and industry, requested $35 billion. Both groups believed that the 2011 budget should include enough funds to be comparable to the FY2010 budget plus the ARRA funds. But Obama only gave NIH a modest increase above inflation. And his budget does not put NIH on the path to doubling their R&D budget over the decade as Obama appears to have in mind for NSF and the Department of Energy’s Office of Science. Of course, the NIH R&D budget was just doubled from 1998 to 2003, while other science agencies received only moderate increases.
For more than 60 years, U.S. economic growth has been stimulated by technological advances related to science and engineering R&D. Because of this, many scientists and engineers argue that R&D should have special status in budgets each year. But scientists do themselves a disservice by asking for such large increases in funding while the federal debt starts to increase to $14 trillion. And is it appropriate for NIH to consume close to half of nondefense R&D funds when other concerns like sustainable energy and climate change still need attention?
While the future of the NIH R&D budget is up to Congress to determine, perhaps the biomedical research community should find better ways to manage existing resources for now, instead of continually asking for more.
Kirstin Matthews is a fellow in science and technology policy at the Baker Institute. Her research focuses on the intersection between traditional biomedical research and public policy. Matthews’ current projects include the Baker Institute International Stem Cell Policy Program, the Civic Scientist Lecture Series and policy studies in research and development funding, genomics and climate change