When President Bush released his 2002 budget request early last April, proposed science funding was so heavily weighted toward medical and defense research that most other R&D agencies considered themselves fortunate to just stay even with inflation. House Science Committee Chairman Sherwood Boehlert (R-N.Y.), said the science funding numbers were so bad that NSF should be read “not sufficient funds” instead of “National Science Foundation.”
Then, thanks to what Office of Management and Budget Director Mitch Daniels described in a National Press Club speech in late November as “converging factors”—primarily the war on terrorism and the recession—the federal government returned to deficit spending. The rush to spend “had all of the characteristics of a jailbreak, with people running in all directions,” he said. Those people, both in the administration and on Capitol Hill, were carrying supplemental spending proposals, and the result for science has been significant.
Federal R&D appropriations climbed...
