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FYI
The American Institute of Physics Bulletin of Science Policy News
Number 15: February 5, 2003

Administration's FY 2004 S&T Budget Request

Rarely has the start of a budget cycle been so confusing.  The 
long-feared failure to complete the FY 2003 budget before the release 
of the FY 2004 request has been realized.  The resulting stalemate has 
forced the Office of Management and Budget to use, as a baseline for 
the FY 2004 budget request, numbers that are a year old, which in many 
cases may be greatly divergent from the final outcome.

Eleven of the thirteen appropriations bills for the year that began 
last October 1 remain in limbo.  While congressional leaders are 
working to find a solution to this impasse, others are warning that 
without concessions on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, Congress will 
be forced to give up and move on to the FY 2004 request.  The result 
would be a continuation of FY 2002 funding until the beginning of 
October.  Congress will try again next week to complete the FY 2003 
budget.

"Baseline" is a word that has been much spoken over the last week,
referring to the number that is used for comparison with the various 
FY 2004 program requests.  The Office of Management and Budget's 
baseline is the amount that the Administration requested a year ago.  
All readily admit that these baselines are unrealistic, since they are 
unlikely, in many cases, to be close to the final FY 2003 
appropriations.

The Office of Management and Budget has prepared a special analysis of 
the President's FY 2004 R&D request, available at
http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2004/pdf/spec.pdf.  Selections
from this analysis follow, using the "Federal Science and Technology 
Budget" classification that accounts for almost all federal basic 
research, greater than 80% of federal applied research, and 
approximately one-half of civilian development.  Percentage changes 
shown are based on the President's FY 2003 request made a year ago.

Commerce NIST: -12%
Commerce NOAA: +26%
Defense Basic Research:  -8% (Note: based on actual current budget)
Defense Applied Research: -14% (Note: based on actual current
 budget)
Department of Energy Science Programs: +2%
Interior USGS: +3%
NASA: +5%
NASA Space Science: +17%
NASA Earth Science: -5%
NASA Biological and Physical Research: +16%
National Institutes of Health: +2%
National Science Foundation: +9%

A future FYI will contain excerpts from this document regarding 
Research and Development.  Forthcoming FYIs will summarize the 
Administration's request for DOD, Department of Education, DOE, NASA, 
NIBIB, NIST, NSF, and USGS.

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Richard M. Jones
Media and Government Relations Division
The American Institute of Physics
fyi{at}aip.org
(301) 209-3094
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