LegiStorm

Summary:

President Obama’s budget request for FY2016 included $145.694 billion for research and development (R&D), an increase of $7.625 billion (5.5%) over the estimated FY2015 R&D funding level of $138.069 billion. The request represented the President’s R&D priorities. Funding for R&D is concentrated in a few departments and agencies. Under President Obama’s FY2016 budget request, seven federal agencies would have received 95.6% of total federal R&D funding, with the Department of Defense (DOD, 49.5%) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS, 21.3%) accounting for more than 70% of all federal R&D funding. The largest increases in agency R&D funding in the President’s request would have gone to the Department of Defense (DOD, up $4.670 billion, 6.9%), Department of Energy (DOE, up $861 million, 7.3%), and the Department of Commerce (DOC, up $601 million, 39.4%). Legislation targeted the R&D budgets of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, National Science Foundation, and DOE Office of Science seeking to double them from their FY2006 levels. The America COMPETES Act aimed to double funding over 7 years, and the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2010 over 11 years. The President’s FY2016 budget requested increases for these accounts, as it did in the President’s FY2015 and FY2014 requests. It departs from earlier Obama and Bush Administration budgets that explicitly stated the doubling goal. Enacted funding for FY2015 for these accounts represents a compound annual growth rate of 3.25% since FY2006, a rate that would result in doubling in 22 years. The President’s FY2016 request continued support for three multi-agency R&D initiatives—the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI), the Networking and Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD) program, and the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP). The request also continued support for the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) initiative, the Materials Genome Initiative, and the National Robotics Initiative. The President proposed FY2016 discretionary funding for seven new manufacturing institutes as part of his proposed National Network for Manufacturing Innovation (NNMI), in addition to the nine that have already been planned, competed, or awarded. The President also proposed $1.9 billion in mandatory funding for the establishment of 29 additional institutes between FY2017 and FY2024. In addition, the FY2016 budget proposed a new multiagency R&D initiative, the Precision Medicine Initiative which seeks to build on research and discoveries that allow medical treatments to be tailored to an individual’s unique characteristics (e.g., a patient’s genes) or the genetic profile of an individual’s tumor. In December 2015, Congress passed, and the President signed, the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2016 (P.L. 114-113) providing discretionary appropriations for all federal agencies for FY2016. For some federal agencies it is possible to discern R&D funding levels directly from this act and its accompanying explanatory statement. In these cases, this report reflects the results of P.L. 114-113. For other federal agencies, R&D is included in appropriations accounts with nonR&D activities and it is not possible to determine specific R&D funding levels until reported by these agencies. As in recent years, the annual appropriations process was completed after the start of the fiscal year. This can affect agencies’ execution of their R&D budgets, including the delay or cancellation of planned R&D activities and acquisition of R&D-related equipment.