CHIPS Act Funding for science and research falls short
A renewed focus on the need to rein in federal spending has raised concerns about whether a bipartisan bill spending billions on advancing scientific research and revitalizing the U.S. semiconductor industry will receive all the funding promised.
President Biden and Republican leaders in the House have reached an agreement in principle to limit federal spending for the next two years in exchange for suspending the debt ceiling and averting the risk of economic catastrophe.
But some lawmakers and other proponents of a bipartisan bill, the CHIPS and Science Act, have become concerned that the legislation’s ambitious goals of bolstering the country’s scientific lead and countering China’s technological rise could be undermined by restrictions on government spending.
The debt ceiling agreement cuts so-called non-defensive discretionary funding — which includes scientific research — for fiscal year 2024. It also limits all discretionary spending to 1 percent growth in 2025, which is effectively a cut since it is likely to be slower than inflation.
Concerns over whether the CHIPS Act would get the funding promised grew even before the debt cap confrontation. Legislators have already failed to appropriate the full amount of funding allowed by the legislation.
Most attention was focused on the $52 billion the law provided to ramp up semiconductor production and research in the United States. That money is not expected to be at risk because it has already been appropriated. But the legislation also authorized about $170 billion for a number of major initiatives to boost research and development, which must be approved each year by lawmakers through a separate appropriation process. As a result, the remaining part of the funding may be cut or fall short in the coming years.
Funding levels for various government agencies that were intended to receive more robust increases have already fallen short of billions of dollars. In fiscal year 2023, approximately $9.87 billion was allocated to the National Science Foundation, down from the $11.9 billion allowed by the CHIPS Act. About $8.1 billion was approved for the Energy Department’s Office of Science, against $8.9 billion in authorized funds. Total funding for research firms this year was nearly $3 billion below allowable levels, according to a recent Analysis of the Brookings Institution.
President Biden has emphasized the increased funding for research and development in the package, promising that it would ensure that the United States “lead the world in the industries of the future”.
“This bill is about more than chips, it’s also about science,” Biden said after Congress passed the bill last year.
Bureau leaders have urged congressional owners to approve the full amount of funding to help meet those goals. Sethuraman Panchanathan, the director of the National Science Foundation, said the money would help lead the nation in industries listed as key areas of focus in the law, such as artificial intelligence and biotechnology.
“We have to make sure that the scientific part is fully funded,” Mr Panchanathan said.
Additional funding could allow the agency to invest more in a new division that aims to accelerate breakthroughs in key technologies, in part by creating pathways for researchers and start-ups to take their ideas from labs to market. It can also help expand the agency AI research and training programs aimed at building the country’s STEM workforce, which agency officials said were critical as the country faces a shortage of workers to build semiconductors.
With extra money, the Office of Science of the Energy Department could invest more in improving the infrastructure of its laboratories and progresses fundamental scientific research underpinning clean energy technologies, such as technologies that more efficiently remove carbon from the atmosphere and other waste streams.
The Trade Department $10 billion effort to invest in areas with the potential to “become globally competitive” through the establishment of at least 20 “technology and innovation hubs” across the country has received only 5 percent of funding so far. Overseen by the Department’s Economic Development Administration, the five-year program aims to revitalize regions by creating jobs and strengthening the capacity to produce and deploy critical technologies.
Alejandra Castillo, a top Commerce official, called the $500 million in allocated funds a “down payment” to lay the program’s foundation.
“With additional credits, EDA can enable more regions with tech hubs and invest in additional projects that can change the trajectory of job creation, innovation in key technologies and the scaling of industries of the future,” Ms. Castillo said in a statement.
Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have been urging congressional owners to fully fund the bill’s initiatives, though some acknowledged that this could be even more challenging with spending restrictions.
Representative Frank Lucas, an Oklahoma Republican and the chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, said he was “very frustrated with how science funding has gone in the United States in recent years” and that he ” a bit of an exciting wait to see” how much government funding would be available in the coming years.
“I will be there to make sure that science and research get their fair share,” said Mr. Lucas, adding that he understood that congressional proprietors had to work with limitations.
Representative Ro Khanna, a California Democrat representing parts of Silicon Valley, said lawmakers “need to bring more urgency” to the bill’s funding. He argued that failure to fully fund the effort would harm the country’s ability to lead in manufacturing and advanced technological developments.
“A bill is fine, but without the money it means nothing,” said Mr. Khanna. “To make America a manufacturing superpower, we need to have technological advancements. Technology has to be the engine for that, because it requires huge productivity increases.”
Some have argued that the United States could fall behind other countries that have also pledged to boost investment in scientific research and technological development, such as China.
“These people are saying we don’t want to hand over the future to China,” said Representative Zoe Lofgren of California, the top Democrat on the House Science Committee. “If you don’t invest enough in science, that’s exactly what they do.”
Matt Hourihan, an author of the Brookings analysis and the associate director of R&D and advanced industry at the Federation of American Scientists, said the programs missing out on money were vital to improving the country’s competitiveness because they United States could help make new discoveries. that could “translate into commercial products” and be manufactured domestically. He added that the nation “quickly fell away from the original vision” of the law.
“Others, including China, are making similar investments in many of these technology areas,” said Mr. Hourihan. “If we don’t invest to compete and achieve global leadership in these different fields of science and technology, others will.”
Late last year, a bipartisan group of senators, led by Senator Maria Cantwell, a Washington Democrat and the chair of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, sent a letter to congressional proprietors urging them to fully fund the bill, which they say would help scale the nation’s highly skilled workforce and bolster American innovation.
The senators noted that funding for previously adopted legislation intended to expand the country’s investment in scientific research and development have also fallen short by billions of dollars, which they say prevented government agencies from fully exploiting their potential and led to increased supply chain vulnerabilities. Major research firms would have received about $77 billion in additional funding had Congress followed the government-approved funding route America COMPETITOR Act of 2007according to a 2022 analysis from the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
The senators argued that Congress should avoid the same pitfalls by fully funding the CHIPS bill.
“The strong focus on semiconductors is welcome, but the bill also seeks more substantial investment in a number of other technologies,” said Mark Muro, a senior fellow at Brookings and an author of the Brookings analysis. “That depends on better funding of the ‘and science’ part of the bill.”