Bill features slight funding cuts

President Barack Obama is expected to sign a bill today that includes only modest cuts to scientific research funding, a major victory for scientists and activists who feared that extensive reductions would significantly affect the United States’ scientific productivity.

Once signed, the bill would cut $38 billion from the federal budget, but the institutions that fund most scientific research at the University — the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Energy Office of Science — would not bear the brunt of the reductions.

“The message, I think, that has come out of this bill is that research is a priority for both parties and the nation’s future innovation,” said Joyce Rechtschaffen ’75, the University’s director of government affairs. “The future of economic prosperity of this country is research, and that has been recognized in this bill,” she added.

The new bill passed the House on Thursday afternoon with a vote of 260-167 and the Senate with a vote of 81-19. The bill, drafted already six months into the fiscal year, would only dictate government spending until Sept. 30.

The anticipated passage of the new bill caps an anxious six months for University researchers and their colleagues across the country. Before both parties and the Obama administration reached an agreement late last week, the only budget to pass the House, HR 1, included several billion dollars of cuts to research funding.

The HR 1 cuts would have meant a host of canceled projects and grants for University researchers and potential layoffs for approximately 150 staff and researchers at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. The new budget proposal appears to end that prospect.

“If the House and Senate pass this budget, we expect that threat is now gone,” PPPL spokeswoman Kitta MacPherson said in an email. “At least for this round of budget negotiations, this result indicates that the value of scientific research to the United States is being appreciated.”

A Daily Princetonian analysis of the new 459-page appropriations bill, as well as analyses conducted by the University and research organizations, indicates that funding for major scientific institutions would remain largely consistent with fiscal year 2010 levels with relatively small cuts.

The budget for the National Institutes of Health will be reduced by $260 million from 2010 levels. Under HR 1, funding for NIH would have been cut by $1.63 billion.

“In the end, NIH gets by with a bruise instead of a gaping wound,” said Jennifer Zeitzer, the director of legislative relations for the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology. “I think there’s a sense of relief.”

The HR 1 cut of $359 million to the National Science Foundation has been reduced to $53 million.

The Department of Energy Office of Science, which funds the PPPL, would receive a cut of $20 million. Under HR 1, the office would have faced an $893 million reduction.

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Due to the elimination of earmarks, the Office of Science’s budget would actually be $56 million more than 2010 levels, according to MacPherson.

The Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory — a national lab affiliated with the University that provides critical climate data to the University’s Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences program — is dependent on federal funding from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

NOAA would face cuts of $142 million, compared to HR 1 cuts of $484.3 million, but the effects of those cuts are unclear.

“We are part of a much bigger piece of the pie, so it will be a little while until the impact to GFDL gets translated,” GFDL spokeswoman Maria Setzer said in an email.

All non-defense agencies will also face additional, across-the-board reductions of 0.2 percent of their budgets.

The dramatic change for research funding appears to be the result of intense lobbying on Capitol Hill by both universities and research organizations in recent weeks.

Rechtschaffen said that Princeton representatives conducted meetings with the New Jersey congressional delegation and key congressional committees to explain the benefits of investment in science. Princeton was also part of a broader lobbying effort by the Association of American Universities.

The Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology also conducted an outreach campaign that brought in scientists from across the country to speak with congressional staff.

“We got the scientific community very, very involved from the beginning,” Zeitzer said. “We explained to members of Congress that $1.6 billion [in cuts to NIH] may help in a very, very small way in cutting the deficit [but the] longer-term impact of the cuts would be far more devastating.”

Senior writer Rachel Jackson contributed reporting.