Washington

President George W. Bush announced his proposals for a 'war budget' on 4 February, which would see a record $112 billion spent on research and development during the 2003 fiscal year, up 8% from this year.

Battle stations: Bush's 2003 budget proposal takes the fight to health and defence. Credit: SOURCE: OSTP

The main components of the increase — which reflect the president's priorities of fighting the war against terrorism, homeland defence and economic growth — are a boost of $5 billion for weapons development at the Pentagon, and an increase of $3.7 billion in funding for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), announced last week (see Nature 415, 459; 2002).

The Bush proposal will now be considered by Congress, which will set a final budget by October, when the 2003 fiscal year begins.

“The budget provides for an unprecedented level of support for research and development,” says John Marburger, President Bush's science adviser. “It is the first time a president has requested more than $100 billion for research and development.”

The proposal would increase the US government's total spending on basic research by $2 billion to $25.5 billion — almost 60% of it at the NIH.

The scientific community was split along now-familiar lines in its initial reaction to this massive increase, with physical and environmental scientists feeling left out by the huge increases at the NIH.

Michael Lubell, head of public affairs at the American Physical Society, points out that when the NIH and the Department of Defense are discounted, spending on the rest of the research and development portfolio will fall. “At the National Science Foundation, for example, everything apart from mathematics and biology is actually cut,” he says. “This isn't a budget to be thrilled about.”

Sherwood Boehlert (Republican, New York), chairman of the Science Committee in the House of Representatives, said in a statement: “Research spending — excepting the NIH — would remain anaemic under this budget.”

But Howard Garrison, a spokesman for the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, says that the NIH increase is “what we've all been hoping for”, and adds: “The big elements of this are all looking good.”

The budget documents themselves put strong emphasis on plans, spearheaded by Mitch Daniels, the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, to base budgets on a more thorough assessment of agency performance (see Nature 415, 466–467; 2002).

The first part of this assessment, published in the budget, was harsh: the National Science Foundation (NSF) was the only agency in the entire government to get the 'thumbs up' for its financial management under the OMB's grading scheme. But NSF officials had to celebrate this accolade with imitation champagne from California, after their budget increase was held to a measly 3.4% (see opposite).

Marcus Peacock, associate director of the OMB, hints that the NSF will be rewarded for its management skills in future years. “This is the first year that we've attempted to link budget and performance,” he says, predicting that additional responsibilities will be shifted to the agency soon.

Peacock also encourages scientists to drop their resistance to the OMB's plans to apply performance assessment to basic research. “I've been reading in a book that it took European mathematicians 300 years to accept the idea of negative numbers,” he says. “I'm hoping we'll do better than that in getting people to accept performance assessment.”

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