Issue 6 (March 21)

On March 9, the Biden Administration began releasing details of its fiscal year (FY) 2024 budget request to Congress, with additional information rolling out over subsequent days. 

In total, the Biden Administration is requesting $209.7 billion for research and development activities across the federal government in FY 2024, an increase of $8.9 billion. Within that amount, $101.2 billion is sought for basic and applied research activities, an increase of $3.5 billion.

The budget identifies several cross-government priorities for the President, including: 

• Cutting the cancer death rate by at least 50 percent over the next 25 years.
• Preparing for and preventing future pandemics.
• Combating climate change.
• Advancing national security and technological competitiveness.
• Broadening participation in science and applying science to achieve equity.
• Investing in STEM education and workforce.

As you will read throughout this report, the FY 2024 budget request prioritizes investment in these and other areas of central importance to the Biden Administration. 

As always, when considering an Administration’s budget proposal, it is important to remember that it remains a largely symbolic policy document that outlines the Administration’s priorities for the year ahead. While it is possible that some of the President’s requests will be enacted, Congress has the final say over the appropriation of funds. The House and Senate Appropriations Committees will soon set their own spending parameters for each of the 12 annual appropriations bills, which may or may not be able to accommodate all the President’s prioritized investments.

The release of the FY 2024 budget request is the official kick-off of “appropriations season.” Congressional committees have begun their oversight hearings for departments and agencies under their purview featuring testimony by Biden Administration officials. House Appropriations Committees typically try to introduce and mark up their versions of the bills in late spring or early summer with the Senate often lagging several weeks behind. The start of the month-long August recess in which lawmakers return home to engage with constituents is a typical target for Appropriations Committees to complete their work on the bills and bring them to the floor for consideration.

However, as COSSA has been reporting, the new House Republican majority under the leadership of Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) is laser-focused on cutting spending for discretionary accounts. Calls in the House to reverse spending back to FY 2022 levels is all but certain to be met with fierce opposition in the Democrat-controlled Senate. The fight over funding is expected to come to a head over the summer as the U.S. approaches the debt limit and threatens to default on its obligations. Republicans are going to demand steep budget cuts in exchange for lifting the debt ceiling.

In addition, as we inch closer to the 2024 Presidential election, finding agreement on appropriations legislation will become all the more complicated. The research community should prepare for any and all scenarios to play out for FY 2024, including the possibility of a year-long continuing resolution that would maintain funding at FY 2023 levels (likely best case), or real cuts to discretionary funding (worst case).

COSSA will continue to report on the progress of FY 2024 funding legislation in the weeks and months ahead. In the meantime, we invite you to read on to learn about the President’s proposals as they pertain to social and behavioral science research.

The Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies (LHHS) is an important committee to the research community in that it is responsible for securing appropriations and drafting legislation for the Department of Education (ED), Department of Labor (DOL), and Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which includes the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The LHHS Subcommittee is one of the most sought-after committee appointments in the Senate due to the wide scope of agencies and priorities under the Subcommittee’s jurisdiction.

Senate Appropriations Committee Chairwoman, Patty Murray (D-WA), and Ranking Member Susan Collins (R-ME) announced the subcommittee leadership roles on February 15. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) was announced as Chairwoman of the LHHS Subcommittee and Shelly Moore Capito (R-WV) as Ranking Member. Previously, Senator Murray served as the Chair of the LHHS subcommittee, but left the position when she became Chairwoman of the full Appropriations Committee. The Ranking Member position was previously held by Roy Blunt (R-MO) who retired at the end of the last Congress.

The subcommittee is expected to begin work on the FY 2024 appropriations bill now that the President’s Budget Request has been released (see COSSA’s in-depth analysis).

The Department of Defense (DOD) has announced a $2 million award for partnerships between six university and Defense Professional Military Education (PME) institution faculty teams in an effort to facilitate connections between faculty who share complementary research interests. These Defense Education and Civilian University Research (DECUR) Partnerships exist under DoD’s Minerva Research Initiative, which strengthens the DOD’s connections with the social science community and helps DoD better understand and prepare for future challenges.

Each DECUR partnership is set to pursue one of the following research projects:

• Critical Minerals, Battery Technology, and Reducing Dependence on Hostile Suppliers in the Clean Energy Supply Chain
• Strategic Competition in Cyberspace: Measuring the Effects of Cyber Campaigning through Experimental Methodology
• Understanding Multi-stakeholder Regime Formation: The Case of Cislunar Space
• Characterizing and Countering the Normalization of Extremism and Communal Violence in Cyber-Social Space
• Assessing the Influence of China’s Belt and Road Initiative in Local Communities at Global Scale
• Artificial Intelligence Design across Cultures: Cognitive Linguistics Describes Ethical Implications

Read more about the awards and partnerships here.

On March 16, The Seattle Times quoted Director of the University of Washington’s Center for Studies in Demography & Ecology and At-Large member of COSSA’s Board of Directors Sara Curran in an article on the need to update the U.S. standards of collecting race and ethnicity data. The recent push to revise the race and ethnicity data standards has been a priority of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), which has led town halls to collect public feedback on the proposed changes to the standards (see previous COSSA coverage).

In the article, Dr. Curran states that “these categories change as communities form and identify themselves and become differentially meaningful over time, and we need to keep up with that.” Read the full article for more details.