NOAA’s budget request seeks $6.6 billion in discretionary appropriations, an increase of $224.8 million from the enacted level for fiscal year 2024. But under that request, certain programs would still see decreases, which lawmakers on the Environment Subcommittee of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee called into question Tuesday.

In opening remarks, Rep. Frank Lucas, R-Okla., who chairs the full committee, said he was “extremely disappointed” that NOAA’s proposed budget decreases funding for its Oceanic and Atmospheric Research division and weather and air chemistry research programs. Those programs were given additional responsibilities and increased authorizations under the bipartisan Weather Act Reauthorization passed in April.

“Yes the budget request is simply a request, and at the end of the day Congress controls the purse strings,” Lucas said. “But the budget request is also a message to all stakeholders and industry, and NOAA’s message is this: the need for improved early and accurate forecasting of severe weather is not a priority for this administration.”

Rep. Deborah Ross, D-N.C., the subcommittee’s ranking member, expressed similar concerns in her opening remarks about cuts to programs within the OAR and the National Ocean Service. 

“These funding reductions would negatively impact NOAA’s capacity to execute coastal observations, ecosystem protection, ocean exploration, innovative research, educational outreach and many more important functions that advance the agency’s mission,” Ross said. “I hope we can discuss strategies to continue the essential work of these programs even under the constraints of the Fiscal Responsibility Act.”

The Fiscal Responsibility Act is a compromise deal that temporarily suspended the debt limit and set caps on defense and nondefense discretionary spending through fiscal years 2024 and 2025. That deal has an additional constraint to the budget process, causing agencies to make difficult choices about their investments.

The hearing also comes as science agencies and programs across the government experienced reductions in the fiscal year 2024 appropriations, including OAR. While the budget for 2025 would be an overall increase in discretionary spending for the agency, it would also decrease the agency’s National Ocean Service budget by 14% and the OAR budget by 11%, according to numbers provided by the subcommittee.

NOAA Administrator Rick Spinrad said in his opening remarks that the budget request seeks funding for five areas: investing in the next generation of environmental satellites; addressing climate change through training professionals and expanding technology; providing science and data that informs economic development; improving knowledge-sharing and service delivery in tribal, urban, and rural communities; and reducing the agency’s maintenance backlog. 

Spinrad said NOAA is prioritizing funding for its satellite constellation. That includes development of its Geostationary Extended Observations satellite program, which the agency says aims to expand weather, climate and ocean observations. 

Notably, the National Weather Service also plans to begin transitioning the Advanced Weather Interactive Processing System to a cloud framework. Spinrad said that work “will give forecasters secure remote access to provide in-person, impact-based decision support services to decision-makers anytime, anywhere.”

Another program that received attention for proposed cuts was the U.S. Integrated Ocean Observing System Program, known as IOOS, which uses data and technologies to provide information and forecasts for the ocean, coasts and Great Lakes.

Rep. Suzanne Bonamici, D-Ore., asked Spinrad how the fiscal year 2025 budget request proposes a $32.5 million cut, or 76% reduction, to that program’s funding, adding that she’s “concerned about some kind of budgetary cliff” when funds from the Inflation Reduction Act expire. That bill provided $3.3 billion to NOAA.

Spinrad said IOOS is one of several programs that reflects “the very difficult decisions that we had to make in this budget,” in part because of the constraints under the Fiscal Responsibility Act and the agency’s commitment to sustaining its current work, such as its investment in satellites and ensuring mission-essential functions don’t falter. 

While the IRA is providing some funding for the program, Spinrad said, it’s not one-for-one. He said he’s meeting with IOOS regional directors to understand what the reductions mean. “We’ve directed that data management [and] cyber infrastructure be the specific activity that is sustained,” he said.

Ross also told Spinrad she was concerned about staffing cuts at the National Weather Service, especially as the hurricane season “is predicted to be extremely active.” 

The fiscal year 2024 budget cut roughly 100 positions from the NWS, Ross said, adding that if the fiscal year 2025 budget doesn’t increase staffing to inflation levels, it “could increase the burden on an already strained workforce.” She asked Spinrad how an “austere” staffing budget would impact the service.

“Our ability to bring people on board is not where I want it to be,” Spinrad said, adding that the agency hired 1,700 people last year, but still needs to focus on retention. NWS Director Ken Graham, Spinrad noted, “is working aggressively to optimize the staffing plan” for weather forecast offices.

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But even the programmatic funding increases President Joe Biden is seeking for those agencies and others in fiscal year 2025 fall short of what Congress authorized in the CHIPS and Science Act, highlighting the difficulty to support agencies key to science and technology goals within the confines and partisan tensions of the budget process. 

Biden’s budget, released Monday, came shortly after Congress passed a “minibus” of six bills to fund agencies for the current fiscal year. Under those appropriations, NSF received $9.06 billion, a roughly  8.3% decrease from the previous year, and NIST received $1.46 billion, a nearly 12% decrease. 

“There will be real impacts across the research enterprise with this reduction to the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF),” an agency spokesman said of the minibus funding level in a written statement. “It is difficult to place this in the context of rapid, large-scale science investments by our competitors such as China with the express purpose of outcompeting the United States.”

A NIST spokesperson, meanwhile, noted in a statement that certain CHIPS programs, such as those for manufacturing incentives and R&D, “received full appropriations in the CHIPS and Science Act” but said the agency “will continue to work with Congress to secure funding for initiatives that were authorized but not fully appropriated.”

The CHIPS and Science Act was signed into law in 2022 to boost U.S. production of semiconductors — an important component for technologies from phones to national security systems — and to support scientific research and development in emerging technology areas like artificial intelligence and quantum computing. 

To help achieve those goals, the statute authorized funding targets for key agencies, including NSF, NIST, and the Department of Energy’s Office of Science. But in the years since the bill’s passage, budget requests and funding bills haven’t met those marks, and Biden’s new budget and the recent appropriations passed by Congress continue that trend.

Matt Hourihan, associate director of research and development and advanced industry at the Federation of American Scientists, said his bottom line with both the minibus and budget is “that we’re not going nearly far enough in investing [in] U.S. science and engineering, to bolster innovation, bolster competitiveness, bolster domestic talent.”

Minibus tension

The cuts to NIST and NSF were met with disappointment from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. Rep. Frank Lucas, R-Okla., chair of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, said in a statement to FedScoop that he was “disappointed in these funding levels” as a supporter of science and technology.

“Unfortunately, in our current fiscal environment we have to make difficult decisions and that’s reflected in this bipartisan, bicameral agreement. Our challenge is figuring out how to continue advancing American science and technology under these funding constraints,” Lucas said.

But House Democrats, while also unhappy with the funding levels, sharply criticized Republicans for the cuts.

“By forcing us to choose between these cuts or recklessly shutting down the federal government, extreme MAGA Republicans and Speaker [Mike] Johnson have handed our competitive edge to China on a silver platter,” Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., ranking member of the Committee on Science, Space and Technology, told FedScoop in a statement. Lofgren called the funding cuts “a blow to our economic competitiveness and national security” and said the biggest impact will be to the workforce.

Rep. Haley Stevens, D-Mich, the ranking member on the House Science Subcommittee on Research and Technology, similarly called the minibus decreases a “self-inflicted wound on American innovation and global leadership” in a comment provided to FedScoop. She also added that the “losses are solely in the hands of Republicans who pushed for these cuts.”

Areas of impact

The minibus included a decrease in the programmatic funding for NIST’s scientific and technical research and services account, from $890 million in fiscal year 2023 to $857 million in the minibus. That’s the first time the account — which funds things like AI, cybersecurity, quantum, and advanced technology research — has been cut, a House Science Committee Democratic staffer told FedScoop. 

A Senate Republican aide noted that NIST received a large funding increase for that account in fiscal year 2023 and said the minibus level is still higher than the funding for that account in fiscal year 2022.

That account also received $223 million in congressionally directed spending, or “earmarks,” which if included, is an increase from the account total with earmarks for the previous year. 

While the minibus did provide NIST with up to $10 million to set up the AI Safety Institute outlined in Biden’s executive order on the technology, the House Science Democratic staffer said other areas of the agency’s research could end up seeing cuts instead. The funding to establish the institute wasn’t the additional $10 million on top of existing appropriations for which a bipartisan group of lawmakers had advocated.

For NSF, the cuts will likely mean fewer opportunities for students and young scientists, as the agency’s work includes things like supporting graduate fellowships, education and training, Hourihan said. “All those programs can be affected by cuts of this magnitude,” he said.

The cuts could also impact NSF’s new Technology Innovations and Partnerships Directorate, which was established under CHIPS and is aimed at boosting U.S. competitiveness in critical and emerging technologies through research.

That directorate was funded through a supplemental last year and wasn’t part of the omnibus, a House Science Democratic staffer noted. Now it’s in “starvation mode” and may have to compete with other directorates for funding, the staffer said.

Budget shortfall

Biden’s budget requests increases for both NSF and NIST’s baseline funding. NSF would get $10.18 billion and NIST would receive $1.5 billion. 

Even though there are increases for quite a few agencies in the president’s budget, Hourihan said they’re “not nearly as much” as the Biden administration has proposed in the past and “a far cry from the CHIPS and Science targets.” 

The White House request “is a function of the tight spending caps that are in place under the Fiscal Responsibility Act that Congress reached last year,” Hourihan said. That legislation was a compromise deal that raised the debt limit and placed caps on defense and nondefense discretionary spending for fiscal years 2024 and 2025.

Hourihan estimates the budget, as is, would be an $8.5 billion shortfall from what was authorized for NSF, NIST and the DOE’s Office of Science in the CHIPS Act legislation.

Mark Becker, president of the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, also noted the shortfall in a statement on Biden’s budget Monday, calling the request “a retreat from the bold vision outlined in the CHIPS and Science Act.”

“The funding bills Congress passed last week take a significant step backward on these priorities and the administration’s proposal for the next Fiscal Year falls short of addressing the scale of the challenge,” Becker said.

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“I think the prospects for the legislation are, I would say, very good to excellent,” Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., lead sponsor of the legislation, told FedScoop on Tuesday outside a hearing exploring federal science agencies’ use of AI for research. “We want to get this done this year.”

Eshoo, isn’t currently a member of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, but was able to participate Tuesday in a joint hearing of its energy and research and technology subcommittees. Eshoo said she anticipates a markup of the legislation in “hopefully in March.”

Similarly, Rep. Jay Obernolte, R-Calif., who is a co-sponsor of the House legislation, told FedScoop outside the same hearing that the legislation is a priority. 

“When I look at the landscape of potential AI legislation that should pass this year, I think the CREATE AI Act is right at the top of that list, and so I’m cautiously optimistic that we’ll see some traction,” Obernolte said.

A spokesperson for the full committee didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on timing for a markup.

While the National Science Foundation recently launched a pilot for the NAIRR to inform the creation of the full-scale resource, the bipartisan and bicameral bill — called the CREATE AI Act — would enshrine it in federal statute. 

Eshoo said she welcomed the pilot launch and was “eager to see what comes out of it,” but also noted that “the full force of it is through the legislation.” 

The idea behind the NAIRR is to provide researchers with the resources needed to carry out their work on AI, including advanced computing, data, software, and AI models. The pilot, which was a requirement in President Joe Biden’s AI executive order, is supported with contributions from 11 federal agencies and 25 private sector partners. 

Evolution, metrics for success

The NAIRR was a central topic of discussion at the Tuesday hearing, which featured witnesses from NSF, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Georgia Tech, Oakland University, and Anthropic. Lawmakers’ questions indicated interest in the pilot and capabilities of the full-scale resource. 

Rep. Frank Lucas, R-Okla., chairman of the full committee, for example, probed panelists about how the resource could keep up “with the rapidly evolving industry standards for advanced computational power.”

Jack Clark, co-founder and head of policy at Anthropic, which has been supportive of the legislation, said making sure researchers can do ambitious research will be key. 

“They should not be able to run into a situation where they’re unable to do their research due to running into computational limits,” Clark said. “And how you achieve that in a fiscally responsible way is to make sure that the NAIRR is allocating a portion of its resources for a small number of big-ticket projects each year and adopt a consortium approach for picking what those are.”

Meanwhile, Rep. Scott Franklin, R-Fla., asked about what metrics Congress should be watching for to evaluate success of the pilot as they weigh the estimated $2.6 billion the full resource would require.

In response, Tess deBlanc Knowles, NSF’s special assistant to the director for artificial intelligence, pointed to the number of users the pilot will serve, whether it reaches communities that don’t typically have access to the resources, how many students it can train, and the impact of the resources on projects “in terms of access to computational data resources that they are able to access through the pilot.”

DeBlanc Knowles also noted that experimenting with types of resources and modes of accessing them in the pilot will help the agency “design and scope the plan for the full-scale NAIRR.” 

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The 36-0 vote sent the bill (H.R. 6213), co-sponsored by Science Committee Chairman Frank Lucas, R-Okla., and ranking member Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., to the House floor. The National Quantum Initiative, which was aimed at bolstering quantum research, expired Sept. 30. The reauthorization, the sponsors say, would build off the accomplishments of the 2018 law in an effort to ensure U.S. competitiveness against China and Russia.

“As China and Russia are actively making notable investments in quantum systems, we must maintain our momentum to secure our leadership position in this revolutionary field, and this bill does just that,” Lucas said in a statement after the markup.

Despite the 2018 legislation establishing the National Quantum Initiative as a 10-year program, its scientific activities were authorized for only five years, according to a June report from the National Quantum Initiative Advisory Committee. That panel recommended continued and expanded support for the program beyond its original sunset in 2028. 

At a previous markup of the bill in November, the committee adopted 19 amendments, all of which were approved by voice vote. 

Those amendments included one from Rep. Max Miller, R-Ohio, to add language directing agencies to consider the use of AI and machine learning in quantum science, engineering and technology, and how quantum might be used to advance AI and other emerging technologies.

The committee also agreed to adopt an amendment that directs the National Science and Technology Council’s Subcommittee on Quantum Information Science to “identify potential use cases with respect to which quantum computing could advance the missions of participating agencies, including through on-premises, cloud-based, hybrid, or networked approaches.” That amendment was offered by Reps. Deborah Ross, D-N.C., and Jay Obernolte, R-Calif.

Several amendments specifically expanded resources for the National Science Foundation, including two amendments for awards the agency would offer for quantum research. Those amendments were offered by Rep. Stephanie Bice (R-Okla.) and Reps. Andrea Salinas, D-Ore., and Jim Baird, R-Ind., respectively. Another amendment from Reps. Obernolte and Haley Stevens, D-Mich., would strengthen NSF’s quantum testbed activities.

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The introduction of the bill by Science Committee Chairman Frank Lucas, R-Okla., and ranking member Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., comes after the 2018 law expired Sept. 30 and, according to a release from the bill sponsors, builds off those accomplishments in an effort to ensure U.S. competitiveness against China and Russia. 

“There’s no time to lose momentum, and I’m confident this bill will empower the government, private sector, and academia to keep working together to advance leading-edge quantum systems,” Lucas said in the release.

The National Quantum Initiative Reauthorization Act, among other things, includes provisions requiring the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy to develop a quantum research strategy with allies to compete with China and Russia, authorizing the National Institute of Standards and Technology to establish three centers for quantum research, and authorizing the creation of a National Science Foundation hub to coordinate workforce pipelines.

It would also authorize the Department of Energy to support quantum foundry development in an effort to meet supply chain needs, and formally authorizes NASA’s quantum research and the creation of its own quantum institute.

Despite the National Quantum Initiative being set up as a 10-year effort, the 2018 bill authorized the centers for only five years, according to a June report from the National Quantum Initiative Advisory Committee. That panel recommended support beyond the original sunset in 2028 and an expansion of the program, such as authorization of additional quantum-focused research centers.

“The 2018 National Quantum Initiative Act enabled the U.S. science and technology enterprise to progress tremendously in this critical technology,” Lofgren said in the release. “We must now build upon these original investments to ensure the United States can remain the world leader in quantum — this bill will do that and more.”

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