By Ben Kallen
On February 10, 2020, President Trump released his fourth budget proposal to Congress. The fiscal year (FY) 2021 budget request reflects the political priorities of the Trump administration and kicks off the congressional appropriations process.
As with prior years, the request proposes drastic cuts to many of the non-defense federal agencies of interest to SIAM; increases to defense spending remain the administration’s top priority. Consistent with the two-year budget agreement that was signed into law last year, the budget proposes spending $740.5 billion on defense — a $2.5 billion increase over the enacted level of FY 2020. In contrast, non-defense programs would be funded at $590 billion, which is a cut of seven percent below current spending and far beneath the FY 2021 cap of $634.5 billion that Congress established in last year’s budget deal.
While Congress will decide final funding levels for FY 2021 and likely reject many proposed cuts, the budget request still provides a useful window into major administration priorities, some of which have bipartisan support. For example, there is broad bipartisan support for increased investments in science and technology, especially in “Industries of the Future”—such as artificial intelligence (AI) and quantum information science—to maintain U.S. leadership and competitiveness.
The subsequent details describe how SIAM’s priority agencies would fare under the aforementioned request:
- The National Science Foundation (NSF) would be funded at $7.74 billion in FY 2021, a 6.5 percent or $537 million cut below the FY 2020 enacted level. Within the NSF, the Division of Mathematical Sciences (DMS) would experience a reduction of 9.4 percent below the FY 2019 level for a total of $214.8 million. The DMS is the source of more than 60 percent of all federal funding for mathematical research (FY 2020 funding figures for NSF directorates and divisions are not yet available).
- The Department of Energy’s Office of Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) would be funded at $988.1 million in FY 2021, which is a 0.8 percent or $8.1 million increase from the FY 2020 enacted level. The Mathematical, Computational, and Computer Sciences Research account of the ASCR would receive $264 million, an increase of 70 percent or $109 million above FY 2020. This growth is driven by the ASCR’s interest in shifting its agenda toward more future-focused research activities in emerging areas like AI/machine learning (ML) and quantum computing.
- The Department of Defense’s basic research programs would be funded at $2.32 billion in FY 2021, a 10.9 percent or $284.2 million cut from the FY 2020 enacted level. The administration justifies these proposed reductions based on the need to reprioritize funding to support more substantial investments in national security priority areas such as AI/ML, hypersonics, microelectronics/5G, and space.
- The National Institutes of Health (NIH) would be funded at $38.7 billion in FY 2021, a 7.2 percent or $3 billion cut below the FY 2020 enacted level. Despite these planned reductions, the administration has proposed a new $50 million initiative in the use of AI/ML to deepen understanding of the underpinnings of chronic diseases and identify promising treatments for these conditions. In the first year of this effort, the NIH would develop key AI and computational data resources, as well as new career pathways for recruiting and training investigators who work at the intersection of AI, data science, and biomedicine.
SIAM will continue to stay abreast of the FY 2021 appropriations cycle and its impact, advocate for strong funding for applied mathematics and computational science programs at relevant agencies, and keep members informed.
Ben Kallen is a government relations associate at Lewis-Burke Associates LLC.