Congress Plans to Mostly Buck Trump’s NSF, NASA, Energy Cuts

Federal lawmakers crafting appropriations legislation for this fiscal year have released plans that largely reject President Trump’s huge proposed cuts to the National Science Foundation, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the Energy Department.

Science reported on the new figures Monday. While Trump asked Congress to halve the NSF’s budget—a slash of billions of dollars—lawmakers are suggesting a reduction of less than a billion for it and NASA, plus an increase for the Energy Department.

Joanne Padrón Carney, chief government relations officer for the American Association for the Advancement of Science told Inside Higher Ed in an email that “the scientific community has spoken out over the last year, and Congress has listened by rejecting steep budget cuts to science.”

“This is an important step in a series of many still to come, as Congress must ensure that appropriated funds are fully obligated, and a full federal budget is passed,” she wrote. Parts of the federal government will begin shutting down again after Jan. 30 if Congress doesn’t pass appropriations bills.

Trump had requested a $5 billion cut from the NSF compared to its budget last year. But the appropriations committees in each chamber have proposed cutting only about $310 million, according to the AAAS’s appropriations debate tracker. That would leave the agency with roughly $8.8 billion.

In July, the chambers were far apart on this agency: The Senate appropriators were suggesting a cut of only $16 million, while House appropriators were eyeing a $2 billion cut.

For NASA, another major federal research funder, Trump requested cutting $6 billion, but the bicameral legislation would only cut $400 million, the AAAS tracker says.

And at the Energy Department, another research funder, Trump asked Congress to cut $1.1 billion from its Office of Science, but the legislation instead suggests an increase of $160 million, the AAAS tracker shows. That’s how much the House had proposed increasing the budget by; the Senate had actually suggested cutting $240 million.

The White House didn’t return requests for comment Tuesday. Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, said in a news release that the proposed legislation “rejects President Trump’s push to let our competitors do laps around us by slashing federal funding for scientific research by upwards of 50% and killing thousands of good jobs in the process.”