We love what you’re doing, but don’t count on getting the additional billions of dollars you’ve been promised.
That was the message this week from Congress to the director of the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) after two key spending panels took up the agency’s request for a 19% budget hike, or an additional $1.4 billion, in 2024. Republicans in the House of Representatives, which they control, lectured NSF’s Sethuraman Panchanathan on the importance of curbing overall federal spending. In the Senate, where Democrats hold a slim majority, a bipartisan group of lawmakers demanded that their constituents receive a bigger slice of NSF’s current $9.9 billion budget. At the same time, both panels praised the agency’s efforts to help the country stay ahead of China in a global competition for scientific supremacy, including a new NSF directorate aimed at shortening the time it takes to turn research findings into new technologies.
“Congratulations on a good year,” Representative Hal Rogers (R–KY) told Panchanathan yesterday at a hearing of the Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Subcommittee he chairs, referring to the $1 billion boost Congress gave NSF for the current fiscal year. “But we have budget difficulties on the Hill that will play a role in what we can help you to do or do without [next year].”
The House hearing took place the same day House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R–CA) unveiled his party’s proposal to hold federal spending to 2022 levels as part of negotiations with Democrats over a looming deadline to avoid defaulting on the country’s debt. If enacted, it could pare as much as $29 billion, or 27%, from projected federal civilian research spending in 2024, according to an analysis by Matt Hourihan of the Federation of American Scientists.
That outcome would be a crushing blow to NSF, which has been promised a budget doubling over 5 years in the CHIPS and Science Act enacted last summer to help the U.S. semiconductor industry. At both the House and Senate hearings, Democrats encouraged Panchanathan to spell out how such cuts would cripple NSF’s efforts to fund cutting-edge research, train the next generation of scientists and engineers, and partner with the private sector to turn those discoveries into new jobs and industries.
In response, Panchanathan served up a litany of bad news. “Every meritorious proposal we reject represents an opportunity for our adversaries to invest in that idea,” he told the House panel. A freeze on new spending, he added, would also crimp NSF’s plans to spend $300 million next year on a network of “regional innovation engines” aimed at boosting economic development across the country and shrink NSF’s investments in artificial intelligence, quantum information science, and other emerging technologies.
But conservative Republicans pushing for the drastic cuts see NSF’s spending differently, even chiding Panchanathan for calling some outlays “investments” in the country’s future. “I’d prefer you use the word spending,” Representative Ben Cline (R–VA) said, arguing that a larger NSF budget simply fuels the ever-growing federal debt, now $31 trillion, unless Congress approves offsetting cuts.
However, Democrats decried what Representative Matt Cartwright (D–PA), former chair of the spending panel, called “mindless cuts” in the Republican proposal. “It’s one thing to say that we think we’re spending enough on science to stay ahead of China,” he told ScienceInsider after the hearing. “But I don’t hear anybody saying that. So slashing NSF’s budget, which helps us meet that goal, doesn’t make any sense.”
During Tuesday’s Senate hearing, at which Panchanathan shared the witness table with NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, members pushed the NSF director to explain how he planned to meet a requirement in the CHIPS Act to spread NSF’s dollars more evenly across the country. NSF’s flagship program for doing that is called the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR).
Panchanathan said he hopes to exceed the new mandate to increase the share of NSF funding going to institutions in the 28 EPSCoR states and jurisdictions from 15% to 20% by 2027. But Senator John Kennedy (R–LA), whose state participates in EPSCoR, said the program’s long history leaves him skeptical.
“We created EPSCoR because [a majority of] your money was being spent in 10 states,” he told Panchanathan. “Forty-four years later, you’re still spending it in 10 states. When are you going to start doing what EPSCoR is supposed to do?”
In the face of a gloomy budget forecast, EPSCoR may be one of the few NSF programs that legislators protect in the months ahead. The chair of the Senate panel, Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D–NH), represents an EPSCoR state, as does Rogers, chair of the House spending panel. Rogers indicated he plans to hold NSF to its promise to spread the wealth.
Panchanathan may face a slightly friendlier audience next week when he goes before the House science committee, which helped write the rosy spending levels authorized in the CHIPS bill. However, the panel’s new chair, Representative Frank Lucas (R–OK), will need to walk a fine line in reconciling his support for a larger NSF budget with McCarthy’s plan for drastic spending cuts.
Last year, Lucas ultimately bowed to the wishes of party leaders and voted against the CHIPS bill after teaming with then-chair Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson (D–TX) to craft many of its provisions. And his new marching orders could leave Lucas in the same position this year.
There’s also plenty of time for further discussion. Congress is unlikely to agree on a final spending bill for the 2024 fiscal year, which starts on 1 October, before the end of the year.
Source: Science Mag