What Would an Approved FY 2009 Budget
Look Like?
Keith Crank, ASA Assistant Director of Research and Graduate Education
Processes in the Environment ($10 million). On the education
side, $28.6 million of the $64.8 million increase will go toward
adding 700 graduate fellowships. NSF also plans to add three sci-
ence and technology centers in 2009.
For the National Institutes of Health, President Bush’s bud-
get is not so generous. The request for NIH was $29.3 billion,
the same as the FY 2008 appropriation. To allow for new activi-
ties, funding for the Office of the Director is being reduced. On
the extramural side, funding for research projects will decrease by
$20 million, with these funds being put into the research centers.
To limit the impact on the number of awards, NIH will not be
including inflationary increases in its ongoing projects.
Basic research at the Department of Defense would see a 1%
increase over its FY 2007 level of $374 million, after absorbing a
9% reduction in FY 2008. The request for basic research at DoD is
$378 million. Applied research, on the other hand, would decrease
from $1.22 billion to $0.78 billion, a reduction of 36%.
The U.S. Census Bureau would continue to receive increases
leading up to the 2010 decennial census. It also would get funds
to reinstate the Survey of Income and Program Participation. The
Bureau of Labor Statistics would see its budget rise by 8.8%. While
some of this increase would offset the agency’s decrease in 2008
and allow it to bring its work force back up to 2007 levels, a large
portion of the increase would be used to cover the rising cost of
the Current Population Survey and enhance the Consumer Price
Index. NSF’s Survey Research Statistics Division would receive
O
n February 4, 2008, President George W. Bush submit-
ted his FY 2009 budget request to Congress. The total
a 10.4% increase to implement a full-scale pilot of a redesigned
request is $3.1 trillion (that’s $3,100,000,000,000). This
Survey of Industrial Research and Development (now renamed
is the first step in what is likely to be a very long process. With a
the Business Research and Development Survey) and to begin
Congress at odds with the administration on almost all priorities,
pilot data collection on postdoctoral activities.
it is unlikely that the actual appropriations will be completed
As mentioned in the opening paragraph, the president and
before President Bush leaves the White House.
Congress do not see eye to eye on their budget priorities. The
But, if the president’s budget were to be approved, what would
president’s budget has an 8.2% increase for security-related activi-
it look like?
ties, but only a 0.3% increase for all other discretionary spend-
I’ll start with the National Science Foundation. Here, the
ing. This means the increases to NSF, the U.S. Census Bureau,
news is very good. The overall NSF budget would increase by
and BLS mentioned above must be offset by decreases in other
13%, though this is not uniform across the different disciplines.
agencies and departments. That is where the problem will come,
For those areas of most interest to the statistics community, the
since Congress is not likely to accept reductions to Medicare and
Division of Mathematical Sciences (DMS) would see a 16%
Medicaid, nor is it likely to accept a flat budget for NIH.
increase; the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences (SBE)
Although FY 2009 begins on October 1, 2008, it is unlikely
would see an 8.2% increase (in the two research divisions); and
that most of the federal agencies will have appropriations by then.
the Education and Human Resources Directorate (EHR) would
I expect another year of continuing resolutions that keep the gov-
see an 8.9% increase.
ernment operating on a day-to-day (or week-to-week) basis for
NSF-wide activities planned for FY 2009 include the con-
much of the fall. We won’t get a clear picture of the 2009 budget
tinuation of Cyber-Enabled Discovery and Innovation (CDI)
until after the elections in November.
($100 million, up $52 million) and new investments in Science
To contact me, send and email to
keith@amstat.org. Questions
and Engineering Beyond Moore’s Law ($20 million), Adaptive
or comments about this article, as well as suggestions for future
Systems Technology (AST) ($15 million), and Dynamics of Water
articles, are always welcome. n
26 AMSTAT NEWS MARCH 2008
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