If lawmakers in Washington, D.C., fail to reach a deal to raise the federal debt ceiling, the government could run out of cash as early as next week. Economists warn that, in the worst-case scenario, for the first time in history, governments cannot pay their debts, plunging the country, and possibly the world, into financial turmoil. Funding for a decade of research and innovation is also at stake as politicians negotiate over government spending, and many science advocates fear budget cuts are inevitable.
“Whatever the deal is, we’ve accepted the reality that there will be less discretionary funding next year,” said Joan Carney, chief government relations officer at the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington, DC. That means less funding for research and development (R&D), she added. Discretionary funds are funds that the US Congress allocates to federal science and other agencies and programs during the annual appropriations process.
The deadlock between Democratic President Joe Biden and the Republicans rests on the “debt ceiling.” This is a congressional-imposed limit on the amount of money the U.S. government can raise through bond issuance and other financial instruments to fund spending (the U.S. currently spends more money than it raises taxes). As things stand, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has declared June 1 as a “tough deadline” and said the U.S. could default on its debt if the cap is not raised by then. Federal agencies such as the National Institutes of Health (NIH) may also be unable to pay research grants or pay federal scientists.
Republicans, who control the U.S. House of Representatives, are trying to leverage a looming deadline to push spending cuts. The House of Representatives has passed a bill that proposes massive budget cuts that could limit government spending across the board for the next decade in exchange for raising the debt ceiling. So far, the Biden administration and Democrats have put a deal on hold. Some argue that Mr. Biden should use his executive powers to avert the crisis by unilaterally extending the government’s borrowing capacity.
No one knows exactly how political brinkmanship will play out, but history suggests that its impact, including on US science, will be felt for years to come. can be felt.
spending limit
For many in Washington, the showdown is a reminder of what happened in former President Barack Obama’s first term in 2011, when Republicans tried to use the impending debt ceiling deadline to limit federal spending for nearly a decade. It feels like a reenactment. “Frankly, the first movie wasn’t that great, but I think the sequel will be worse,” said Jennifer Zeitzer, director of public affairs for the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB). ), based in Rockville, Maryland.
Over the next few years, Congress repeatedly approved funding that exceeded the spending cap set in 2011, but the deal on the debt ceiling dealt a heavy blow. Research and development funding has been cut by an estimated $240 billion over the next nine years, according to Matt Houlihan, who analyzes the science budget for the Federation of American Scientists, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group. This is the amount needed to support the world’s largest public biomedical funder, the NIH, for five years at current budget levels.
“This is a significant underspending,” says Houlihan. If lawmakers had kept their original promises, the situation would have been much worse.
Round 2
The cuts Republicans are currently seeking are even tougher, with legislation passed last month that would cut more than $3.5 trillion in discretionary spending over the next decade. Assuming Congress distributes these cuts evenly across institutions and programs, Houlihan said, overall federal government investment in science would be reduced by an estimated $442 billion by 2033, and that investment in science would grow with inflation. It states a 19% decrease compared to the base case of an increase. Also, the cuts for science agencies such as the NIH and the National Science Foundation (NSF), which fund about a quarter of basic science research by the U.S. federal government, are exempt from spending on defense research and development. If so, it could be even bigger. , as some lawmakers have suggested doing so.
The push to curb spending began less than a year after Congress enacted legislation authorizing substantial increases in federal spending on science and innovation, including doubling the NSF budget through 2027. The bill, called CHIPS and the Science Act, garnered bipartisan support for the following reasons: This is due to growing concerns about economic and scientific competition with China. “We are still in a situation where we cannot back up our rhetoric with the kind of investment that we hoped,” Houlihan said.
Meanwhile, lawmakers are still proceeding with their normal spending process for fiscal 2024, with Republicans aiming to cut federal spending to levels enacted in 2022. If these cuts were spread evenly across all discretionary programs, federal government investment in science would be reduced by a factor of 20-22. According to FASEB, by 2024 it will be 100%.
One possibility is that Republicans and Biden could reach an agreement on raising the debt ceiling without resolving questions about the level of spending in 2024. In such a scenario, an alternative position for both parties later this year could be a continuation resolution that leaves 2024 funding flat at 2023 levels, Zeitzer said.
“It’s still better than direct reduction, but it’s not very good for the research enterprise,” says Zeitzer. “We are holding our breath.”
This article is reproduced with permission and was first published on May 22, 2023.
