WITH PUNY HIKES IN 2021 U.S. BUDGET, SCIENTISTS HOPE FOR CASH

The massive $1.4 trillion spending bill that US President Donald Trump signed into law once again reverses the deep cuts the outgoing president had proposed for most science agencies. Even so, the modest hikes for 2021 have left the research community wanting more, Science News reported.

The final budget package includes increases of 3% for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), 2.5% for the National Science Foundation (NSF), 2.3% for NASA science, and 0.4% for the Department of Energy (DOE’s) science office.

Those numbers put the cherry on top of four years of robust growth under Trump despite his persistent attempts to eviscerate federal science budgets.

NIH’s budget now stands at $42.9 billion, a 33% rise over its 2016 level of $32.3 billion. Similarly, spending by DOE science tops $7 billion, compared with $5.4 billion in 2017, a boost of 30%. NASA science programs rose by 8% and 11% in 2018 and 2019, respectively, before slowing in 2020 and 2021.

NSF’s budget, now nearly $8.5 billion, has grown the least among the four biggest federal science agencies. But even so, a 14% rise since 2017 compares favorably with an overall increase of only 4% during the second term of former President Barack Obama.

For 2021, lawmakers carved out increases for science despite giving themselves almost no additional money, compared with this year, to spend on all civilian programs. That generosity reflects a bipartisan consensus on the value of academic research. Yet many research advocates are greeting the 2021 numbers with a collective shrug.

“The long-overdue full-year appropriations package will provide federal research agencies much-needed funding predictability after an incredibly challenging year,” says Lauren Brookmeyer of the Science Coalition, a group of 50 major research universities.

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