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Federal Spending Bills Contain 2,526 R&D Earmarks, AAAS Analysis Finds
A new AAAS analysis of the disappointing federal budget for 2008 reveals Congress’s obsession with earmarks is back with a vengeance, guaranteeing that competition for the remaining federal funds for R&D will be even more fierce.
While lower than 2006, earmarks consumed $4.5 billion of the federal R&D budget, scattered among 2,526 projects AAAS was able to identify.
Congressional earmarks amounted to $939 million in the omnibus appropriations bill signed last month by President Bush and $3.5 billion in the Department of Defense appropriations bill enacted in November, said Kei Koizumi, head of the AAAS R&D Budget and Policy Program.
"Although earmarked R&D funding declines in 2008 compared to previous years," Koizumi said, "in a tight budget environment, earmarks once again crowd out hoped-for increases in competitively awarded research programs."
Koizumi's analysis found that the Department of Energy and the Department of Agriculture are the most heavily earmarked domestic R&D agencies, with nearly 10 percent of Energy’s R&D portfolio siphoned off and 18 percent of USDA’s. After being earmark-free for the first years of its existence, the Department of Homeland Security is slated to get $82 million in R&D earmarks in 2008.
On the positive front, the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation remain earmark-free.
Earmarks tend to be geographically concentrated. The top 10 state recipients of earmarksled by California with $294 millionaccount for 44 percent of all earmarked funds, Koizumi found. The top 10 states are a mixture of the most populous states and states with politically powerful congressional appropriators.
The complete AAAS earmark analysis includes a link to a spreadsheet of all 2008 R&D earmarks by amount, state, performer or project, and agency. The AAAS R&D Budget and Policy Program site also includes details of all R&D funding in the omnibus bill for the top R&D agencies.
Few Washington pundits hold any prospects for much of the 2009 budget passing before the fiscal year begins Oct. 1 – or even before the presidential election in November. Given that scenario, the full budget is not likely to be considered before the January inaugural and next session of the “new” Congress. Earmarks cannot be attached to Continuing Resolutions (yet) so 2009, like 2007, could be a pork-free budget year.