Earlier this month, the Trump administration released its FY18 budget outline, with the full budget proposal to be released in May. The major winner in the outline is the Department of Defense (DoD), which is requested to receive a $52 billion increase. The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), which is part of the DoE but is tied to the DoD, is requested to receive an 11% increase, or $1.4 billion. While specific science and technology programs are not specified in the outline, Congress has called out DoD and NNSA labs as needing recapitalization as well as general maintenance. In a separate proposal, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan requested $2.1 billion for the DoD’s Research, Development, Test & Evaluation budget to further advance defense technologies and get them into the field.

The DoE is slated for a 5.6% decrease, or $1.7 billion. Within the DoE, the Advanced Research Program Agency – Energy (ARPA-E) would be completely removed, while spending on the Office of Science would decrease by 17%, or $900 million. Also requested to be cut by $2 billion, or 50%, are the offices for applied energy, including the Office of Fossil Energy, Office of Nuclear Energy, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, and Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability. The Trump administration claimed the reason for these cuts are that the private sector is better situated to finance innovative technologies.

Spending on the NIH would decrease by 18%, or $5.8 billion, along with a “reorganizing” of the agency; however, the budget outline specified that funding for the 21^st Century Cures Act would be preserved. The EPA’s budget would fall by 31%, or $2.6 billion, with the budget for the EPA’s Office of Research and Development decreasing almost 40% (see IBO 3/15/17).

The budget outline fails to clearly indicate federal spending on agencies such as NSF and NIST. It states that the budget for the Department of Commerce, under which the NIST operates, would be cut by 16%, or $1.5 billion, although NIST is not specifically mentioned. Furthermore, the outline requests the elimination of $124 million of the budget for NIST’s Manufacturing Extension Partnership, under which public-private organizations collaborate with small to medium-sized manufacturing companies. The Trump administration believes that these collaborations should be funded by non-government sources.

Source: American Institute of Physics