Trump Budget Would Slash Science Programs across Government
Cuts include 18 percent at the National Institutes of Health and 30 percent at the Environmental Protection AgencyUS President Donald Trump released a revised budget plan on May 23 that would slash science spending across the federal government in 2018. Biomedical, public-health and environmental research programs are among those that would be pared back.
Those cuts, along with deep reductions in programs for the poor, are balanced by a proposed 10% increase in military spending. That echoes the “skinny budget” outline that Trump released in March, which faced opposition in Congress. Earlier this month, lawmakers approved a 2017 budget deal that increased funding for key science agencies and ignored the president's push for cuts.
“This budget is terrible, and we’re confident that Congress will ignore it,” says Jennifer Zeitzer, director of legislative relations at the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology in Bethesda, Maryland.
Here, Nature breaks down the president's budget request. Check back as we update this story with analysis and reaction throughout the day.
National Institutes of Health
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Food and Drug Administration
National Science Foundation
NASA
Environmental Protection Agency
Department of Energy
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
US Geological Survey
NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH
The National Institutes of Health would face a cut of 18% in the Trump plan, compared to its 2017 budget. This would be achieved by “structural changes” to reduce the amount of overhead that the agency pays to grant recipients, according to budget documents. Under the current system, individual research institutions negotiate with the government to set the rate at which they are reimbursed for expenses such as administration and facility construction and maintenance. The White House wants one rate for all grantees to “mitigate the risk for fraud and abuse”.
The budget would eliminate the $70 million Fogarty International Center, which coordinates with other NIH institutes to train researchers and health-care providers overseas. The rest of the cuts would be spread evenly across the NIH’s 26 remaining institutes and centres.
The White House plan would create the US$272 million National Institute for Research on Safety and Quality. The institute would study the outcomes of treatments and health services, taking on the role of the independent Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), which would be eliminated.
The Trump budget also includes $86 million for the NIH’s arm of the Brain Research Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative. And it sets aside $100 million for the Precision Medicine Initiative: a 10-year effort to track the health of 1 million Americans that is scheduled to launch later this year.
Congressman Tom Cole (Republican, Oklahoma) who chairs the US House of Representatives spending subcommittee that funds the NIH, has said that he does not expect that Congress will support Trump’s proposed cuts. Other lawmakers from both major political parties have also come out against the president’s plan for the NIH.
CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION
One bright spot for public health is Trump’s proposal to establish an “emergency response fund” within the Department of Health and Human Services, which includes the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). This would give the department the authority to move up to 1% of its budget to respond to emerging health threats, such as the recent outbreaks of the Ebola and Zika viruses. Much of this work would likely involve the CDC.
Public-health officials have called for such a fund for years. But Georges Benjamin, president of the American Public Health Association in Washington DC, says that Trump’s proposal “a shell game”. The White House wants to slash more than $1.2 billion from the CDC’s budget, with the largest cuts coming from public-health preparedness programs.
“They dramatically cut the actual operating funds and then create the capacity to go into your pocket, which has much less money in it,” Benjamin says. “It’s smoke and mirrors.”
FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION
The Trump plan would cut government funding for the US Food and Drug Administration by 31%, to $1.9 billion. That $855 million decrease would be offset by a $1.3 billion increase in the “user fees” that companies pay the agency to review their products. The law that sets the agency's user-fee rate expires in September, and Congress is working on reauthorizing it. Draft legislation released jointly by the House and Senate in April would raise user fees by only $400 million per year.
NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION
The National Science Foundation’s (NSF) budget would be cut by about 11% from the 2016 level, to $6.7 billion. That would allow the agency to give out 8,000 new grants in fiscal year 2018, about 800 fewer than it awarded in 2016.
Among the NSF’s seven directorates, the largest cuts would come from social and behavioural sciences (down 10.4%, to $244 million), computer science (down 10.3%, to $839 million) and geosciences (down 10.1%, to $1.2 billion).
Biology would see the smallest reduction — 7.1%, to $672 million. The Office of Integrative Activities, which supports interdisciplinary research, would see the largest cut among the agency’s main accounts. Its bud
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