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Nearly seven months after the start of the US fiscal year (FY) 2024, the US federal government finally has a budget, with the second set of twelve appropriations bills signed into law by President Biden on March 23. These annual bills, which fund the government through September 30, 2024, provide $194.3 for research and development (R&D) funding, a cut of about $5 billion (2.7%) compared to last year, when a substantial increase of 10% had been appropriated. These cuts occurred following spending limits imposed by the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023.
In this context, most agencies conducting R&D had their budgets cut for fiscal year 2024. The National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) both saw their funding lowered by 8%, leaving NSF’s budget at $9.87 billion and NIST’s at $1.26 billion. These cuts follow big increases last year, however, when NSF’s budget went up 12% and NIST received a 23% increase, both largely driven by the CHIPS and Science Act, passed in 2022 to fund semiconductor manufacturing and research in the United States.
Critically, support for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the largest overall funder of US scientific research, is essentially flat, down less than 1%, to $48.5 billion. Most of the 27 institutes and centers within NIH have flat budgets for 2024, with exceptions for research on mental health and Alzheimer’s disease, up $75 million and $100 million, respectively.
Within the NIH, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) gained $120 million for research grants. However, the additional $216 million that NCI was receiving from the Cancer Moonshot ended last year; the result is that the total NCI budget for FY2024 is down $96 million compared to 2023. The budget for National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID) remains flat at $6.6 billion.
The Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), created in March 2022 to support high-potential, high-impact biomedical and health research, was allocated $1.5 billion, the same as in 2023, although President Biden had requested a $1 billion increase. One exciting new initiative just launched by ARPA-H is the Lymphatic Imaging, Genomics, and pHenotyping Technologies (LIGHT) program, which will pursue comprehensive diagnostic tools for detecting lymphatic dysfunction.
Another bright note was the 1.7% increase Congress to the Department of Energy (DOE)’s Office of Science. With a 2024 budget of $8.24 billion, the Office, which stewards 10 of the country’s national laboratories, is the largest source of physical science research funding in the US. It is also the lead federal agency supporting fundamental energy production research—critical for the transition to green energy.
The Science and Technology arm of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had its budget reduced $44 million, or 5.5%, to $758 million, while funding for the EPA as a whole was slashed 10.3%—the largest cut to agencies conducting R&D. Nevertheless, the fight over the 2024 budget fended off Republican plans to roll back climate and clean energy programs created by the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.
Smaller budgets for some US government agencies that fund science research will likely somewhat depress academic and government sector opportunities for analytical instrument companies this year. However, the massive investments championed by the Biden Administration through the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS Act will continue, with much of the actual spending still to take place. Currently, for example, the Department of Commerce is working to establish the National Semiconductor Technology Center (NSTC), which will support semiconductor R&D and manufacturing and drive demand for instrumentation and tools for both research and industrial end uses. Similarly, the new CHIPS R&D Metrology Program, run through NIST, will seek to strengthen the US semiconductor industry through advanced measurement, standardization, modeling, and simulation.
Likewise, ongoing strong funding for NIH also means that health and disease research will continue unabated, maintaining need for life sciences instrumentation and related tools, such as mass spectrometers, proteomics and multiomics tools, advanced software, laboratory automation, chromatographs, spectrometers, NMR, and microscopy.
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