Organizers of an effort to get the Presidential Candidates (Obama, Clinton, and McCain) to participate in a debate on their plans for science and technology if they were to be elected have been mostly rebuffed by the candidates. Be that as it may, the current issue of Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News was able to obtain a short Q&A interview from Obama and Clinton (McCain declined to participate). In this interview, both Obama and Clinton stated that they were in favor of doubling the federal budget for research at the NIH, NSF, the Dept. of Energy's Office of Science, and NIST over a ten-year period. I doubt that either candidate is really in favor of doubling the NIH's research budget or could get it passed if they were, because its FY2008 budget is already $28.5 billion and the agency just went through a successful doubling cycle from FY1999 to FY2003.
Neglecting the NIH, this proposal is similar to the Bush Administration's 2006 American Competitiveness Initiative which also proposed to double physical science research over a 10-year period. But while the NIH's five-year doubling proposal went through the system in relatively good economic times and was implemented, the 10-year physical science proposal hit the budgetary system in relatively weak economic times and the roughly 7% increases needed to uniformly double in 10 years have not yet been seen in the first two economic cycles for these agencies (although the Administration's current FY2009 budget proposal does show a 14.5% increase to make up for the FY2007 and FY2008 shortfalls).
It's totally unclear how the FY2009 research budget will fare, since the last two federal budgets (FY2007 and FY2008) were both approved through the continuing resolution process four months late into the budgetary approval process (January rather than October). This process was not conducive to the physical science doubling proposals. It's also an election year, and most congressional members will be campaigning rather than debating budgetary resolutions until well into the new fiscal year. And while Obama and Clinton have opined some vague proposals for their S&T plans, McCain has not. Also, after the November elections, there's likely to be a lot of new members, and some shifting in committee representation for the 111th Congress. The economic downturn also tosses another variable into the pot.
The net result of these events is that most research budgets are likely to remain in limbo until after the November elections and the chances are high that another continuing resolution process could be effected prior to the January 20, 2009 Inauguration just so the new Congress and the new President can focus on other pressing matters, like getting a whole administrative staff approved and installed.
