Panel backs modest increases for National Science Foundation, NASA, and other agencies
Setting up a familiar clash over federal research spending, a U.S. Senate panel yesterday approved legislation that would give the National Science Foundation (NSF), NASA, and several other research agencies more money for the 2025 fiscal year than the U.S. House of Representatives has endorsed in its version of the bill.
Despite generally bipartisan support in Congress for science funding, in recent years the Democrat-controlled Senate has often backed higher spending levels than the Republican-controlled House for key research agencies, leading to sometimes thorny final negotiations. Yesterday’s Senate vote seems to ensure that dynamic will hold for negotiations over spending in the 2025 fiscal year that begins on 1 October.
The 25 July vote by the Senate appropriations committee marked the first step toward finalizing the Commerce, State, and Justice (CJS) spending bill, a $73.7 billion measure that includes funding for NSF, NASA, the National Institutes of Standards and Technology (NIST), and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
Overall, the bill would provide modest increases to those agencies. For example, NSF would get a 5%, $490 million boost to $9.55 billion. That is less than the $10.2 billion requested by President Joe Biden, but more than the $9.25 billion backed by the House.
NASA would get a 2.25% increase to $25.43 billion—$50 million more than Biden’s request and $257 million more than proposed by the House.
Here are some highlights from the bill, which will now move to a vote in the full Senate. It’s not clear when both the Senate and the House will finalize their spending bills. Any final budget deal will likely come after the November elections.
NSF
Besides giving the agency $300 million more in 2025 than the House wants to spend, the Senate bill sets somewhat different priorities. For example, it would boost NSF’s education programs by $53 million, or 4.5%, over the current $1.17 billion—rather than the $172 million cut proposed by the House. It would also meet NSF’s request for $300 million to fund new construction, whereas the House would shrink that request by $66 million.
NSF has pledged $1.6 billion to help build two extremely large telescopes, one in Hawaii and one in Chile, and senators want it to move faster on the U.S. Extremely Large Telescope Program (US-ELTP). The Senate bill would provide $100 million for new astronomical facilities listed as priorities in a 2021 National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine report, and US-ELTP is seen as the most likely beneficiary, with the money going to continued design work. Senators also want NSF’s next budget request, for 2026,to include the first tranche of construction money for US-ELTP.
“The recommended funding is essential for our team to continue making progress toward our goal of being operational for American scientists by the early 2030s,” says Walter Massey, chair of the board managing one of the projects, the Giant Magellan Telescope.
The Senate bill also tells NSF to rethink some of the controversial changes it has made to the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR), a program aimed at helping small and rural states receive a larger share of NSF dollars. At a hearing this spring, several senators complained that the changes could put state EPSCoR offices out of business. The bill would ensure funding for those offices. Senators also told NSF that one-fifth of any new awards it makes to a flagship program to boost regional economic development should go to institutions in one of the 25 EPSCoR states.
NASA
NASA’s Science Directorate, which oversees five research areas, would get a 3.3%, $240 million increase to $7.58 billion. That’s about $20 million more than Biden’s request and $240 million more than the flat funding proposed by the House.
One notable discrepancy between the Senate and House is in funding for NASA’s earth science programs. The Senate proposes $2.37 billion, an 8% increase over this year’s funding, matching the president’s request. The House proposed an 8.9% cut to $2 billion, largely reflecting Republican views that climate research is not a high priority.
The planetary science and astrophysics programs would see increases under the Senate bill. Astrophysics receives $1.6 billion, roughly equal to the request and the House number. Planetary sciences receives $2.7 billion, roughly equal to the request but about $200 million less than the House mark. Notably, the Senate sets aside $72 million to sustain operations of the aging Chandra X-ray Observatory; NASA’s budget request had called for a nearly 40% cut, to $41.1 million—a level scientists said would soon render the space-based observatory inoperable. The Senate bill would also maintain this year’s spending levels for the Hubble Space Telescope, which NASA had proposed to cut by about $10 million, posing difficulties but not a shuttering of the mission. The Senate wrote in a report accompanying the bill that “both Hubble and Chandra continue to … secure U.S. leadership in space and science,” while acknowledging that the observatories “will eventually need to be decommissioned as their capabilities degrade and resources are prioritized to other observatories.”
The Senate panel rejected Biden’s proposal to cut funding for NASA’s heliophysics division by 2.4%, or $18 million, to $787 million. Instead, the panel noted it was “frustrated” with the proposed cut and proposed a boost of $7 million to $812 million. The panel also proposed a 4.4% boost, to $90.8 million, for NASA’s biological and physical sciences programs.
When it comes to NASA’s STEM Engagement programs, some of which provide support to minority serving institutions and aim to create a diverse workforce, the Senate is more supportive than the House. The House has proposed a 38% cut to $89 million, whereas the Senate essentially matches the agency’s request for a flat budget of $144 million. The House cut likely reflects concerns among that body’s Republicans about programs aimed at promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion.
“Compared to 2024 where NASA science took a big hit, this is actually a welcome improvement,” says Jack Kiraly, director of government relations at the Planetary Society, a science advocacy group. And the Senate plan, he adds, “is actually a pretty balanced proposal compared to that of the House.”
NIST
Overall, the Senate bill meets the $1.5 billion request for the agency, which represents about a $50 million increase over this year. The House has called for a slight cut.
NIST’s core laboratories would get nearly $1.1 billion, above the request of $977 million and slightly more than the House’s proposed $1 billion.
The NIST numbers include dozens of “Congressionally Directed Spending items”—funding for specific projects backed by lawmakers that the agency must use for those purposes. They include new medical imaging equipment for several universities, a soil carbon sampling and analysis laboratory for a climate research center in Massachusetts, and a semiconductor testing facility in Oregon.
NOAA
NOAA’s main research arm, the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, receives $734 million, above both the request of $646 million and the House mark of $714 million.
Like the budget for NIST, NOAA’s includes a number of earmarked spending items. They include a number of aquaculture facilities in various states, a water monitoring program in Virginia, and an effort in Hawaii to engage students in humpback whale management.
With reporting by Jeffrey Mervis and Hannah Richter.(ScienceAdviser)
