Research gets a boost in final 2023 spending agreement

Congress did the best it could this week for basic research, unveiling a belated $1.7 trillion spending bill that keeps the U.S. government running for the next 9 months. But legislators’ desire to increase the defense budget kept them from delivering a major promised boost for the National Science Foundation (NSF) and held several other civilian agencies to small increases.

The bill, expected to be finalized as Science went to press, will give the National Institutes of Health another solid year of growth. Its $2.5 billion, 5.6% increase will raise its 2023 budget—by far the largest of any federal research agency—to $47.5 billion. That increase is 10 times larger than President Joe Biden had requested. But Congress approved just $1.5 billion of his $5 billion request for the new Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, a modest $500 million increase for its second year of operations.

NSF will get an 8% boost, to $9.54 billion. The additional $700 million is less than half the 20% increase that Biden had requested and that legislators had promised NSF earlier this year in a massive bill to boost the U.S. semiconductor industry.

Thanks to a budget gimmick, Congress is actually giving NSF an additional $1 billion over 2 years, classifying the boost as mandatory spending that falls outside the normal spending cap. The research account received $818 million more and education programs get $210 million, with most of the money coming in the current fiscal year.

Although NASA’s overall budget will rise by 6%, to $25.4 billion, its science division will grow by only 2%, to $7.8 billion. Earth sciences will increase by 6%, with lawmakers requesting plans for the first four satellites in NASA’s Earth System Observatory, a multibillion-dollar fleet that will monitor clouds, aerosols, and other phenomena that affect climate change. Congress also allowed NASA to shutter its Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, a telescope carried on a Boeing 747, giving NASA $30 million for “an orderly close-out.”

Animal welfare advocates notched a victory when legislators gave the Food and Drug Administration the power to approve new drugs and biologics that have not been tested in animals. The legislation suggests alternative methods, including using organ chips and cell-based assays. “Removing the mandate for these tests opens the door to a more modern approach that reflects the current science,” says Kathy Guillermo, senior vice president at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, one group that lobbied for the change.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s budget grows by 17%, to $6.35 billion, less than the $6.9 billion that Biden requested. Its climate science budget would increase by 12%, to $224 million. The extra money would help fund a $12 million initiative to study water in the western United States, which is gripped by drought.

Lawmakers doubled Biden’s requested increase for the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Office of Science, the nation’s largest funder of physical science. The 8.4% boost, to $8.1 billion, will mostly go into research grants and activities in the office’s six major disciplinary areas. A separate bill passed in the summer funneled $1.5 billion to more than a dozen construction projects for new large user facilities at DOE’s national laboratories.

The U.S. Geological Survey gets a 7% increase, to $1.5 billion, as does the Environmental Protection Agency’s science arm, putting it at $802 million. The agriculture department’s competitive research grants program goes up 2%, to $455 million.

The massive spending bill also contains billions for projects—many of them at universities—chosen by individual legislators but not requested by agencies. Those earmarks can come at the expense of growing an agency’s regular research activities. At the National Institute of Standards and Technology, for example, the earmarks consume more than half of the $103 million increase the agency received for its in-house research account, and nearly one-quarter of NIST’s overall budget of $1.6 billion.

This is a developing story and will be updated.