fy18 budget

Senate Appropriations subcommittees have advanced the remaining FY 2018 departmental budgets: Defense, Homeland Security, Interior, and

Although it has been slated for elimination under the president’s proposed budget, the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) program is making progress toward achieving its statutory mission and goals, and it “cannot reasonably be expected to have completely fulfilled those goals given so few years of operation and the size of its budget.” That is among the findings released this week by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) in its assessment of ARPA-E. The project was overseen by the Board on Science, Technology, and Economic Policy (STEP) and was tasked with assessing ARPA-E’s progress toward achieving its statutory mission and goals, and determining whether it is on a trajectory to achieve them. In short, the answer is that it is.

The president’s budget for FY 2018 would eliminate funding for numerous innovation programs, slash spending on R&D and technology transfer and limit education and training opportunities. The full budget proposal may well be “dead on arrival” in Congress, but this is not the same as Congress rejecting each budget proposal.

The president’s FY 2018 request for discretionary budget authority to fund programs and operating expenses is $21.0 billion, approximately $4.8 billion below the 2017 estimate in discretionary program funding for the Department of Agriculture (USDA). This includes funding for Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), Rural Development, Forest Service, food safety, research, and conservation activities. However, the budget does not include the USDA reorganization plan that was announced by Secretary Sonny Perdue on May 11, which proposes a change in status for Rural Development.

The Department of Commerce houses a variety of science- and innovation-relevant agencies, most of which receive substantial cuts in the administration’s FY 2018 budget. Collectively, Commerce would lose many of its initiatives targeted to entrepreneurs, most notably the Regional Innovation Strategies (RIS) program and the Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP).

The FY 2018 budget request for the Department of Defense (DOD) would provide $574.5 billion in discretionary base funding. Research, Development, Test, and Evaluation (RDT&E) would receive a total $83.3 billion – an $11 billion (15.2 percent) increase. This includes $13.2 billion for Science and Technology, a $0.6 billion (4.8 percent) increase, which is comprised of Basic Research, Applied Research and Advanced Technology Development. DoD Basic Research would receive $2.2 billion ($0.2 billion; 4.8 percent increase), Applied Research $5 billion ($0.2 billion; 3.3 percent increase), and Advanced Technology Development $6 billion ($0.4 billion; 6.4 percent increase).

The president’s proposed FY 2018 budget would provide $976.9 million in total funding for Career and Technical Education (CTE) within the U.S. Department of Education, a $148.1 million (13.2 percent) decrease. National CTE programs would receive $27.4 million in the proposed budget, a $20 million (270.3 percent) increase. State grant-based CTE programs would receive $949.5 million in FY 2018, a $168.1 million (15 percent) decrease.

The president’s FY 2018 budget request would provide $28.0 billion in total funding for the Department of Energy, a $2.7 billion (8.9 percent) decrease from the FY 2017 omnibus. Notably, the proposed budget would eliminate the ARPA-E program, which received $306 million as part of the FY 2017 omnibus. The proposed budget “refocuses the Department’s energy and science programs on early-stage research and development (R&D) at the national laboratories to advance American primacy in scientific and energy research in an efficient and cost effective manner,” according to the DOE.

The administration’s FY 2018 budget request for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is $69.8 billion in discretionary spending, reflecting a $14.6 billion (17.3 percent) decrease from FY 2017 estimated funding levels. Discretionary spending accounts for approximately 7 percent of the total proposed HHS budget. Mandatory spending for programs like Medicare, Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program account for the balance. Total FY 2018 budget authority for HHS would be $1.1 trillion (0.03 percent increase over FY 2017 estimates).

The administration’s FY 2018 budget request for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is $44.1 billion, a $5.2 billion (10.5 percent) decrease in non-disaster, net discretionary funding, excluding disaster-relief funding. The proposed budget would include $975.8 million in new funding for “high-priority tactical infrastructure and border security technology improvements to provide a layered defense at the border and effective surveillance technology and equipment.”