BIOPHYSICAL SOCIETY NEWSLETTER
8
APRIL
2014
Public Affairs
President’s 2015 Budget: Only
Modest Increase in Federal
Research
On March 4,
President Obama
released his pro-
posed FY 2015 budget, which included $135.4
billion in total federal research and development
funding (see chart below). The amount remains
within the spending caps established by the
Budget Control Act and the December budget
agreement. It is a 1.2% increase over 2014 levels,
which, when inflation is taken into account,
results in a 0.5% decrease to $5.1 million.
His baseline budget provides $30.2 billion for
NIH, and $7.3 billion for NSF, which is 1% over
2014 but the amount dedicated to research actu-
ally lower by .03% from 2014. The DOE Office
of Science saw an increase of less than 1%.
At the March 4 Office of Science and Technology
Policy Budget Briefing,
John P. Holdren
, Assistant
to the President for Science and Technology and
Director, OSTP, described the “biggest win-
ners” under Obama’s baseline proposal as being
the Department of Interior, which would receive
$925 million in environmental and energy-related
research; the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration, which would see $688 million
toward support of Earth-observing satellites and
other research; the National Institute of Standards
and Technology, slated to get $690 million for
R&D; and research related to patient-centered
outcomes research to combat public-health chal-
lenges such as antibiotic resistance and neurode-
generative diseases. His proposed budget includes
a doubling in funding for the BRAIN Initiative to
approximately $200 million for 2015 across NIH,
NSF, and DARPA.
Holdren summarized the President’s baseline
2015 R&D proposal with the following words:
“These average increases are plainly modest,”
adding that “this budget required a lot of tough
choices. All of us would have preferred more.”
The President also proposed to asking Congress to
lift spending caps to provide another $56 billion
for an “Opportunities, Growth, and Security Ini-
tiative” to promote innovation and job creation,
including basic and applied research, high-tech
manufacturing hubs, incentives for states support-
ing energy efficiency, and other science-based pri-
orities that he described in his State of the Union
address. Those $56 billion would not increase
the national debt but would be offset by cuts in
other areas that would need to be agreed upon
by Congress. According to an AAAS analysis,
the additional $56 billion request would include
$5.3 billion in R&D support, including an extra
$2.1 billion for Department of Defense R&D, $1
billion for a Climate Resilience Fund, $970 mil-
lion for the National Institutes of Health (NIH),
$886 million for NASA, and $552 million for the
National Science Foundation (NSF).
Córdova Appointed
NSF Director
On March 12,
France Córdova
, former Purdue
President, was approved as director of the Nation-
Science Agencies Funding (in billions)
Agency
FY 2012
FY 2013 with sequester cuts
FY 2014
President's Propsed
FY 2015
NIH
30.046
28.604
29.63
30.3
NSF
5.614
6.884
7.172
7.3
DOE Office of Science
4.463
4.621
5.07
5.11
