FPN24-25
U.S. FY 2025 Budget Progress
May 20, 2024
The House Appropriations Committee is meeting Thursday May 23 to approve
its plans to propose a 6% cut to non-defense spending and a 1% increase
to defense spending for fiscal year 2025. Committee Chair Tom Cole
(R-OK) announced the toplines last week as well as preliminary budget
allocations for the panel's 12 subcommittees that together draft the
federal discretionary budget. He also released the committee's schedule
for advancing the spending bills. The subcommittee that funds NASA, the
National Science Foundation, and the Commerce Department plans to
advance its spending proposals on June 12, and the subcommittee for the
Department of Energy plans to advance its proposals on June 28. Reacting
to the allocations, Democrats on the committee stated they will not
support anything less than a 1% increase to non-defense spending.
Meanwhile, leaders of various science agencies will testify this week on
their budget request for fiscal year 2025. The heads of NASA and the
National Science Foundation will appear together on Thursday before the
Senate Appropriations Committee, which will also hear from leaders of
the Department of Energy on Wednesday and the National Institutes of
Health on Thursday. The head of the National Institute of Standards and
Technology will appear before the House Science Committee on Wednesday,
following a hearing last week focused on NSF. At that event, the former
chair of NSF's board, Dan Reed, testified that a 6% cut to NSF would be
"devastating" to the agency, coming on the heels of the 8% cut it
received for the current fiscal year.