Almost six months into the fiscal year, Congress gave final approval to a fiscal year (FY) 2009 omnibus bill on March 10 combining the nine unfinished appropriations bills, which President Obama later signed into law (P.L. 111-8) on March 11. The final $410 billion omnibus budget wraps up the FY 2009 appropriations for the remaining agencies that had been operating on a continuing resolution (CR) since the end of the 110th Congress. Included in the omnibus bill is $151.1 billion in federal R&D, an increase of $6.8 billion or 4.7 percent above the FY 2008 estimate. As a result, every major R&D funding agency will receive an increase greater than the expected rate of inflation, and in many cases the final FY 2009 numbers are larger than the budget request submitted by the previous administration to the 110th Congress. See the complete AAAS analysis of the bill for more details, including figures with and without stimulus funds.
Large gains for COMPETES Agencies. The National Science Foundation (NSF), the Department of Energy’s Office of Science (DOE OS), and Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology laboratories (NIST), agencies slated for doubling as part of the America COMPETES Act passed by the previous Congress, will see increases in funding for FY 2009 consistent with doubling their budgets over a decade. Excluding stimulus funds, the three agencies in FY 2009 receive $4.8 billion for R&D (up 6.8 percent) at NSF, $4.3 billion for R&D (up 17.3 percent) at the DOE OS, and $561 million for R&D (up 7.5 percent) at NIST. Including the appropriations in the stimulus bill for these agencies results in respective increases in R&D to $7.5 billion (up 66 percent), $6.1 billion (up 69 percent), and $1.1 billion (up 115 percent over 2008 levels. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) will also receive a significant boost, with a total budget of $30.5 billion, a 3.2 percent increase, and a total budget of $40.9 billion (a 38 percent increase) with the stimulus funds included.
The
complete series of AAAS R&D Funding Updates on FY 2009 congressional appropriations
is available on the AAAS R&D web site on the "FY 2009
R&D" page. These updates supplement AAAS
Report XXXIII: Research and Development FY 2009, a comprehensive analysis
of R&D in the proposed federal budget for FY 2009 that was published in April.
Also available is a continually updated table on the status
of FY 2009 appropriations.
- March 23, 2009
 Since
1976, the R&D Budget and Policy Program has been providing timely, comprehensive,
and independent analyses of R&D funding trends in the federal budget as a
service to the science, engineering and policymaking communities.
Through its
Web site and email list, the Program makes available continually updated coverage
of R&D funding trends, ongoing budget debates in Congress and the Executive
Branch, and potential impacts of budget legislation. The Web site also offers
a guide to R&D funding data as well as downloadable copies of its printed
reports. Every spring, the Program hosts the annual AAAS
Forum on Science and Technology Policy (formerly the AAAS Colloquium), the
nation’s premier conference devoted to S&T policy. The next Forum will
be held April 30 - May 1, 2009, in Washington, DC.
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