Allocating Federal Funds for Science and Technology by Committee on Criteria for Federal Support of Research & Development

Author:Committee on Criteria for Federal Support of Research & Development
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Policy for Science and Technology
Publisher: NATIONAL ACADEMY PRESS
Published: 1995-11-22T00:00:00+00:00

During the 1980s and early 1990s, several programs were initiated to provide financial and other incentives for industrial R&D and for industrially related R&D conducted at universities or federal laboratories (see Box II.1). These included the Small Business Innovation Research program, the NSF Engineering Research Centers, and the Advanced Technology Program and Manufacturing Extension Partnerships at the Department of Commerce. In addition, federal policy changes enabled the creation of the cooperative research and development agreement, or CRADA, a mechanism for joint R&D involving companies and federal laboratories.

• Throughout the five decades following World War II, federal funds for R&D were reduced substantially in only one period.

The costs of the Vietnam War squeezed nondefense R&D along with other nondefense discretionary spending. From 1966 to 1975, federal support for nondefense R&D dropped nearly 22 percent in real terms. The successful conclusion of NASA’s Apollo program contributed to the decline in federal R&D funding during that period, as did skepticism about the value of advanced technology that was engendered by the Vietnam War and the contemporaneous environmental movement.

Since the mid-1980s, the continuing struggle to control federal budget deficits has put increasing pressure on federal R&D funding. R&D programs have had to compete for money more directly with other federal activities and have also been affected by the various mechanisms adopted to enforce budget deficit reduction, including the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985 (commonly known as the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Act) and its amendments as well as the Budget Enforcement Act of 1990.

Budgetary pressure on federal R&D spending is intense today. Federal funds previously appropriated to support R&D during Fiscal Year 1995 have been cut (rescinded) by nearly $2 billion. Furthermore, much larger cuts in federal R&D funding are slated for Fiscal Year 1996, and pressures on federal discretionary spending make further cuts in future years likely.

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