The generally lacklustre trajectory of the US research budget announced last week by President Bush hardly comes as a surprise, given the country's mountainous economic woes. The 2005 budget allows no growth, after inflation is taken into account, at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) or the National Science Foundation (NSF). Most other agencies do even less well, and those with any connection to environmental science, such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, fare even worse.

Despite the protestations of biomedical-research lobbyists, the NIH was expected to enter a period of consolidation after five years of rapid growth. Congress may now look for direct results from an agency that now spends $28 billion a year. But the treatment of the NSF, which funds most non-biomedical research at US universities, is disappointing and inconsistent. In late 2002, Bush signed an authorization bill that allowed for the doubling of the NSF's funding over five years. It was wrong for him to sign this bill, which was about long-term planning, and then ignore its contents.

The reorientation of NASA towards a revived human-spaceflight programme had already produced some scientific casualties ahead of the budget's release — most notably, a shortened life for the Hubble space telescope. But Hubble is only one of a number of odd choices made to redirect support towards a possible manned Moon mission. These should now be scrutinized in Congress.

Elsewhere, economic policy is coming home to roost. Despite a boost to combat mad cow disease, resources will remain short at the US Department of Agriculture and at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which deals with global infectious diseases. With deficits as far as the eye can see, pressing scientific challenges facing the government evidently cannot attract sufficient resources.

The budget also shows few signs of effective interagency cooperation. The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy is supposed to orchestrate this, but its footprints on the budget are hard to see. To give just one example: NASA has set aside no funds for a space-based physics experiment that it planned in collaboration with the Department of Energy, the main US physics agency. But the energy department has budgeted to continue with it.

There is little indication in the research budget of direction from the centre. Previous presidents sought to coordinate action in areas such as climate change, nanotechnology and mathematics. Scientists don't always welcome these special initiatives, but in these areas they have been effective at getting things moving on US university campuses. No sign of that this year. If this turns out to be George W. Bush's last budget, he will have gone out with a whimper.