By Science News Staff
For the third year in a row, President Donald Trump’s administration has unveiled a budget request to Congress that calls for deep spending cuts at many federal science agencies, including a 15% cut for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and a 12% cut for the National Science Foundation (NSF), while providing hefty increases for the military.
But the $4.7 trillion request for the 2020 fiscal year that begins 1 October, released today, is already drawing bipartisan pushback from lawmakers in Congress and—as with past Trump administration requests—many of the cuts are unlikely to be enacted into law.
Here are some highlights so far:
- At NIH, the proposal provides $33 billion for health research, suggesting a cut of $6 billlion—or 15%—below the agency’s current 2019 budget of $39.1 billion. The request includes a $500 million, 10-year childhood cancer initiative that Trump proposed in his State of the Union address. In 2020, that would involve a new effort to “learn from every child with cancer”—an apparent reference to a big data sharing project discussed by National Cancer Institute Director Ned Sharpless that has gotten a mixed response from pediatric cancer researchers and advocates.
- NSF would face a cut of roughly $1 billion, to $7.1 billion, a 12% reduction.
- At the Department of Energy, the Office of Science’s budget would shrink by roughly 17%, to $5.5 billion.
- NASA’s planetary science program would be cut by roughly 7%, to $2.6 billion. The planned mission to Jupiter’s moon Europa would receive $600 million in 2020, down from $740 million this year, and the administration has proposed launching it on a commercial vehicle rather than NASA’s heavy-lift rocket.
There are a few modest bright spots. For example, the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA’s) flagship competitive grants program, would get an $85 million increase, or 20%, to $500 million. Overall, USDA’s budget would be cut 15%.
The document the White House released today provides relatively few details. More information is expected next week, when the administration has said it will issue the bulk of its spending plan. Even then, it could be several additional weeks until the full scope of the administration’s proposal for specific agencies becomes clear.
Overall, White House officials say their goal is to cut spending on domestic and foreign aid programs by about 5% below 2019 levels while increasing military spending. At the same time, the administration says it wants to generally abide by a 2011 law that calls for reducing nondefense spending by 9% and defense spending by 11% in 2020, compared to this year’s spending.
To meet those objectives while increasing defense spending, today’s request employs a number of accounting gimmicks that are likely to be rejected by Congress, setting the stage for another fight over revising the spending caps. Three similar battles in recent years have resulted in Congress and the White House increasing the caps, in some cases enabling substantial spending increases for many agencies that fund or conduct research.
This year’s battle will begin in earnest this week, as spending panels in both the Senate and House of Representatives are scheduled to begin reviewing the president’s request.
This developing story will be updated.
Source: Science Mag